Appearing on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live, Brzezinski was asked whether she and her co-host and husband, Scarborough, have maintained contact with Trump following their Mar-a-Lago visit. “Yeah,” she answered, per the New York Post, which seemed to surprise Cohen.
“It’s called our job,” Brzezinski added.
Cohen wanted to know if Trump was mad with the left-leaning couple, to which the MSNBC anchor responded, “I have a hard time answering that because he could be mad right now.”
She went on to note how “it’s important to know the people that you’re covering and to have as much insight as possible,” adding that she and Scarborough approach every administration the same way.
“Every single president that we’ve covered, we have known and we have known everybody in the White House and tried our best to get as much insight on and off the record as possible,” Brzezinski stated.
Morning Joefaced backlash in November 2024 following Trump’s election victory when viewers slammed Brzezinski and Scarborough for meeting with Trump, which they reasoned was done because it was “time to do something different.”
“Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him,” Brzezinski said at the time. “For those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back, why wouldn’t we? Five years of political warfare has deeply divided Washington and the country.”
The couple received backlash from viewers and political commentators, including former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who said not a word Brzezinski and Scarborough say “can ever be trusted again” and referred to them as “confidence tricksters” and “grifters.” Meanwhile, on The View, co-host Sunny Hostin accused the pair of “kissing [Trump’s] ring” and said their credibility as journalists should be thrown into question.
Morning Joe also took a brief ratings hit following the Trump meeting. The November 20 episode, where the hosts discussed their meeting, brought in 839,000 total viewers and 113,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo, while the Tuesday, November 21 episode dropped to 680,000 total viewers and 76,000 in the key demo. However, the show returned to steady numbers in the weeks after.
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