News/Commentary

‘Morning Joe’ in free fall since meeting with Trump, forced to turn off social media comments

November 20, 2024 | | Print Article

Further fallout from an attempt to bury the hatchet found MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” making defensive moves on social media as the co-hosts riffed on their career futures amid a ratings dive.

Kicking off the week, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski made themselves fodder for the intolerant left after they announced a peaceable meeting with President-elect Donald Trump to let bygones be bygones and open a line of communication. However, as backlash included fellow corporate media pundits ripping into the married talking heads, their X account turned off replies.

Early Tuesday, Aaron Rupar noted, “@Morning_Joe has turned off replies to tweets and hasn’t posted clips from the show the last two mornings. A sign that Joe and Mika’s trip to Mar-a-Lago isn’t going over well.”

The move came as the Daily Mail detailed some of the immediate reactions to Scarborough and Brzezinski’s reveal of their sit down with Trump. Their viewership dropped from around 840,000 to about 694,000 following the meeting.

While a rebound in the third hour brought the viewership up to around 775,000, it remained that in the most critical demographic, viewers aged 25-54, roughly 40% had tuned out after it was made clear they would not only be “talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him,” as Brzezinski said.

The couple appeared aware of the tenuous ground they stood upon Wednesday as they addressed a report from the Wall Street Journal about Comcast’s intention to “spin-off” its NBCUniversal properties into an independent media business.

“I will say really quickly on this, you know, Drudge [Report] at the top said, like ‘News melts down!’ all this other stuff,” said Scarborough. “I mean, I could be completely wrong: we could all be fired a year from now. When this happens, you never know what’s gonna happen.”

“Or tomorrow,” added Brzezinski amid nervous laughter.

(Video Credit: MSNBC)

Amid broader post-election ratings troubles, others who have participated in the business of demonizing Trump, like the ladies on ABC’s “The View,” heaped on the criticism of the “Morning Joe” co-hosts for their supposed willingness to “kiss his ring.”

Such was the take from Sunny Hostin as she contended, “Look the bottom line is that America needs a free press that is willing to speak truth to power right now, more than ever. I think that we have to be very clear-eyed when we think about the president-elect and cover the president-elect, and I don’t think you need to sit down for 90 minutes at Mar-a-Lago and kiss his ring to be able to speak truth and be able to cover a story. So maybe they’re not journalists in the true sense, maybe they’re saying they’re opinion journalists.”

As it happened, the next day the former prosecutor was forced to read a “legal note” before the program cut to commercial after failing to tell the whole story about allegations brought against former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s nominee for attorney general.

Meanwhile, as Scarborough touted “supportive” calls for the visit to Trump, cancel culture had set its sights on “Morning Joe” and their peers by extension as users continued to sound off about their newfound distaste for the pundits.

Kevin Haggerty
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