Morning Joe: We’re Breaking Up With You
How Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s Both-Sides Pivot is Fueling MAGA’s Dangerous Illusions
Dear Joe and Mika,
We’re not doing this.
Watching your capitulation to Donald Trump has been profoundly disappointing. Let’s not forget your off-the-record trip to Mar-a-Lago post-election—a move that alienated much of your audience, including my husband and me. Your ratings plummeted for a reason.
Yesterday, David Frum—a conservative, center-right writer and pro-democracy advocate—appeared on Morning Joe. When discussing Pete Hegseth, Frum made a light-hearted quip: “If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.” According to Frum, a producer immediately whispered in his earpiece to avoid disparaging Fox News. Shortly after, he was excused from the set.
Following his departure, Mika delivered a baffling on-air “apology,” claiming the joke was “too flippant” for the moment, adding that Fox News has “a lot of good people” who care about Hegseth. This spectacle was disturbing. Fox News has long been the propaganda arm of Trump and MAGA. Even the mildest critique of it is now off-limits? Are you at 30 Rock okay? Blink twice if you’re in distress.
Frum’s account of the incident in The Atlantic was honest, necessary, and widely shared. Yet this morning, you doubled down on your bizarre behavior, spending nine defensive, cagey minutes gaslighting your audience. You even dragged in George Conway, whose “crime” was sharing Frum’s article.
This capitulation to both Trump and Fox News is appalling. Your pivot to both-sides rhetoric and soft-appeasement of the MAGA movement is not just misguided—it’s dangerous. It’s exactly what architects like Steve Bannon count on to advance their illiberal agenda.
We need truth-tellers in legacy media—voices unafraid to speak truth to power. Instead, you’re delivering gifts to the very forces threatening democracy. Joe and Mika, you know this. You knew it when you called Trump a fascist, and you know it now.
Your influence and money will shield you from the consequences of the illiberal movement you’re normalizing. It’s time to retire. Meanwhile, the rest of us must support and create independent media that refuses to bow to fear.
The right side of history demands fearlessness, not soft appeasement.
David Frum’s Atlantic article: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/appeasement-new-age-trump/680871/