‘Morning Joe’ Bends Knee to ‘Fascist’ Trump

Cable news is out of touch — and knows it

MSNBC hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough announced this morning that they had met with president-elect Donald Trump last Thursday at Mar-a-Lago, the first time they said in seven years. The co-hosts (and consorts, weirdly) of the  “Morning Joe” talk show had until recently described candidate Trump as a “fascist” who was going “full-on Hitler.” 

Cable news like MSNBC has profited handsomely from Donald Trump for almost a decade now, a cash cow that demanded equaling or besting the hyperbole of our once and future president. But Morning Joe’s reversal is as clear an admission as I can imagine that their hysterical coverage has been an utter failure.

The corporate suits at MSNBC are undoubtedly looking at the balance sheet. Morning Joe’s reversal, though, of traveling to the Fuhrer’s nest to kiss the ring, is an admission that as a partisan pressure strategy, Trumpmongering about the coming fascist coup is a failure.

Then there’s the reality that cable news is largely pro wrestling, fine to enjoy for entertainment but not to be taken too seriously. This was demonstrated in President Biden and Vice President Harris both congratulating Trump on his victory — not something you do for someone you really think is a fascist dictator, as I’ve written. This is not a defense of Trump, who does and says things I think are insane. But if the past decade of breathless reporting on every bizarre Trump utterance should have taught us anything, it’s that people don’t care. Or at the very least, they care more about substantive issues like the economy, which is why Trump won.

Joe and Mika certainly don’t take their own blather seriously — if they ever did — judging from their unapologetic statement on their meeting with Trump, which was all of two minutes long. Here’s what Brzezinski said: 

“And 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…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.”

Former Republican congressman Scarborough, the personification of a quarter-zipped cashmere sweater, and Brzezinksi, the patrician daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinksi (famed advisor to presidents Johnson and Carter), look and act like every segment was filmed between leisurely rounds of polo. That even these Marie Antoniette types finally realize the futility of flashlight-under-your-chin scary campfire storytelling about Trump should give you a sense of just how discredited that type of journalism is.

Just look at how pompous Mika’s explanation of her Mar-a-Lago visit was, framing it as some kind of diplomatic breakthrough like Nixon visiting China:

“What we did agree on was to restart communications. My father often spoke with world leaders with whom he and the United States profoundly disagreed.”

Even someone blowhard enough to say that can see how out-of-touch and childish it is to regard Trump as someone you can simply not engage with. And I hate to say it, but she’s right. Democrats spent the better part of the past decade in pursuit of This One Weird Trick that could defeat Trump without having to reckon with why his message resonated in the first place. And it’s happening again, with the news media frenzy over the supposed “constitutional crisis” posed by Trump’s nominees and projected conflict with the Senate over confirmation. Below is a supercut of how many times major media outlets have uttered the phrase “constitutional crisis” over the past week alone. 

This is the exact same kind of Democracy Dies in Darkness chicken little routine the Harris campaign ran on. It is also the kind of reporting that audiences are weary of because there are only so many times you can cry wolf. There’s no shortage of real things Trump is poised to do — for example, cut corporate taxes or increase national security spending and so on — that they could report on instead.

My advice to these cable news outlets: do you really want to be more out of touch than “Morning Joe”?

— Edited by William M. Arkin