‘Morning Joe’s’ visit with Donald Trump draws criticism — and some praise

The buzz in the media world continues to be about MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealing that they visited President-elect Donald Trump late last week at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

The two married-to-each-other co-hosts, who regularly skewered Trump in the past, are getting bashed online and elsewhere for meeting with Trump.

The Wall Street Journal’s Isabella Simonetti wrote, “The change in stance by Scarborough and Brzezinski was met with a backlash from the left and right, ranging from former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann to conservatives like former Fox News host Megyn Kelly and right-wing pundit Scott Jennings.”

In his Status newsletter, veteran media journalist Oliver Darcy noted that on the show, Brzezinski said, “For those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times. I guess I would ask back: Why wouldn’t we?"

“Uh,” Darcy wrote, “have you watched your own show?”

“The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart also answered Brzenzinski’s question by saying, “Uh, because you said he was Hitler.”

The “Morning Joe” co-hosts explained their reasoning behind meeting with Trump, saying it was to “restart communications.”

And, look, one can make an argument that if co-hosts of a popular morning program on cable news have a chance to sit down with the president-elect, it would be irresponsible not to do so.

But was there more to all of it than restarting communications and doing the right thing journalistically?

CNN’s Brian Stelter wrote in his “Reliable Sources” newsletter, “According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Scarborough and Brzezinski were credibly concerned that they could face governmental and legal harassment from the incoming Trump administration. Knowing that Trump has threatened retribution against his perceived political opponents, and that Trump has promoted lies about Scarborough and Brzezinski in the past, the MSNBC hosts decided to reach out to the president-elect.”

Scarborough said on the air Tuesday that all the negative reaction on social media is not reflective of “the real world.” Hmm. Well, true, social media sometimes can be a bit of a distortion of the real world, but that also sounds like Scarborough is eager to dismiss some of the very real criticism. It wasn’t just a few people on X.

He added, “We were flooded with phone calls from people all day, literally around the world, very positive, very supportive, going 'I understand what you did,' etcetera. All of us will do the best we can do and we're all working towards a better America.”

In general, much of the criticism against Scarborough and Brzezinski is from those who think they are normalizing Trump.

But in a piece for The Daily Beast, Keli Goff wrote, “To their credit, by reaching out to Trump, Scarborough and Brzezinski are proving that they are finally putting their audience first again. Their job is not to reinforce their friends’ biases, but to report and analyze the truth. You cannot do that if you insult and disengage with anyone who disagrees with you or attempt to bury anything unflattering to your friends. And besides, speaking to real-life people you disagree with is the only way to understand their point of view — so you can change it, if that is your goal.”

But Mediaite’s Colby Hall makes a point that many critics are making in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago meeting. Hall wrote, “There is no question that Scarborough and Brzezinski have been among the most vocal — and influential — voices sounding the alarm about a second Trump administration, sometimes resorting to shouting at the camera or holding back tears. Charlie Spierling recently unearthed a video of Scarborough shouting at an audience that ‘there is no meeting in the middle’ with anti-democratic Trump. The sudden pivot to making nice with the guy they were ill-afraid to compare to Hitler certainly undermines the ferocity of their former criticism. It also raises the question of whether those criticisms were fueled by opportunism rather than a principled position: are these just pundits who lost the fight and are now toadying up to the winner, because that’s where the power lies?”

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TV-to-Trump’s White House

Once again, Donald Trump is adding someone to his team who is best known for being on television. Trump nominated Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Oz ran an unsuccessful 2022 campaign for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, losing to Democrat John Fetterman. But he is best known for being a guest on Oprah Winfrey’s show and then hosting his own program, “The Dr. Oz Show.”

Media Matters’ Matt Gertz noted in a tweet, “Oz made at least 81 Fox weekday appearances during 2020, becoming a key source of information for Donald Trump during the early stage of the coronavirus pandemic.”

CNN’s Kate Sullivan and Alayna Treene wrote, “Early on in the pandemic, for instance, Oz talked up the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a way to treat the coronavirus — despite the lack of firm scientific evidence that it was an effective treatment.”

They added, “Oz, who is an advocate of alternative medicines and treatments, has been skewered by the medical community for years. In 2015, a group of physicians wrote Columbia University, saying they were ‘dismayed’ Oz was a member of the school’s faculty. And in 2014, Oz was scolded by senators during a congressional hearing over his promotion of weight-loss products on his television show.”

But, hey, he was on TV a lot — never a bad thing in Trump world.

So what will Oz be overseeing, assuming he is confirmed by the Senate?

The New York Times reported, “The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services oversee several of the country’s largest government programs, providing health coverage to more than 150 million Americans. They regulate health insurance and set policy that guides the prices that doctors, hospitals and drug companies are paid for many medical services. About a quarter of all federal spending runs through the centers.”

Interesting reporting

The Washington Post recently told its staff members that most of them are expected to return to the office five days a week by June of next year. That news didn’t go over so well with a good portion of the newsroom. The Washington Post Guild called the policy “inflexible and outdated,” adding, “Guild leadership sees this for what it is: a change that stands to further disrupt our work rather than to improve our productivity or collaboration.”

On Tuesday, Semafor’s Max Tani gained access to Post internal Q&A where one of the questions was, “What would you say to a person who does not wish to return to a 5-day a week office schedule?”

The Post’s answer to that: “If an employee decides they do not wish to work at the Post on a 5-day a week office schedule, we understand that and will accept their resignation.”

Yikes.

Meanwhile, New York magazine’s Charlotte Klein has a new piece out: “Jeff Bezos Cracks Down on the Washington Post.” In the story, Klein digs into possible candidates for who will ultimately run the newsroom.

Top pods

Apple released the most popular podcasts of 2024. The top 10 are:

1. The New York Times’ The Daily
2. Crime Junkie
3. The Joe Rogan Experience
4. Dateline NBC
5. SmartLess
6. Huberman Lab
7. This American Life
8. New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
9. Up First from NPR
10. Morbid

Apple also lists the top new shows, series, podcast episodes, most shared shows, most shared episodes, most followed shows, top subscriber shows and the top channels.

Media tidbits

• Sally Buzbee, the former executive editor of The Washington Post, is joining Reuters as its top editor for the United States and Canada. She will replace Kieran Murray, who is taking over the company’s live events business. Buzbee was in charge of The Associated Press newsroom when she was selected to replace legendary Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron in 2021. Buzbee then left the Post in June after she objected to a newsroom reorganization put in place by new Post CEO Will Lewis. Here is more on Buzbee’s move to Reuters.
• The New York Times’ Elizabeth Williamson and Benjamin Mullin with “The Onion’s Bid to Acquire Infowars Has Gotten Messy.”
• The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell with “Truth Social investors hoped to get ‘very rich’ after Trump’s win. Not quite.”
• Axios’ Sara Fischer with “Comcast plans to spin off NBCU's cable channels.”
• NPR’s David Folkenflik with “Local news is in crisis. This paper has a $150 million plan.”
• My Poynter colleague, Enock Nyariki, with “Wisconsin Watch pushes to fill fact deserts as local news disappear.”
• In Tuesday’s newsletter, my colleague Angela Fu wrote about the latest Pew Research Center study that showed more than 20% of adults in the United States regularly get their news from “news influencers.” Taylor Lorenz writes more about this for her User Mag Substack: “The majority of news influencers are conservative men, study finds.”
• Netflix had all kinds of buffering and technical problems while airing last Friday’s boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. So that raises questions about whether the streaming service will be able to handle two NFL games on Christmas Day. Front Office Sports’ Eric Fisher with “NFL Backs Netflix for Christmas Day Doubleheader Despite Recent Issues.”

Hot type

• For the Los Angeles Times, Marc Ballon writes about Cher’s new memoir: “Cher’s rise to stardom and rocky romance with Sonny Bono come into focus in new memoir.”

More resources for journalists

• Encourage an outstanding colleague to apply for Leadership Academy for Women in Media.
• Ensure your newsroom is on the cutting edge of evolving criminal justice coverage.
• Top-tier training for public media executives.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].