Morning Blow

Many political pundits had a 180-degree conversion after the presidential election - not so much toward Donald Trump but away from Kamala Harris.  Before the election, Harris was lauded for her joyful demeanor and her desire to reach out to anti-Trump Republicans, and her campaign received high marks for its positive message and ground game operations.  The day Harris conceded, these same pundits suddenly turned around and lambasted the Democrats for the campaign Harris had led and dissected everything she did wrong.  

Of course, there were warning signs that those of us who were applauding Harris should have seen right in front of our faces.  Elissa Slotkin warned that the Harris campaign was failing to reach out to more voters in Michigan and that the energy on the ground was negative.  Democrats in Pennsylvania complained that the Harris campaign was screwing up with the canvassers they were sending to key counties and cities - like sending Chinese-American canvassers to black neighborhoods.  (Aside: Supermodel icon Paulina Porizkova volunteered for the Harris campaign and canvassed for her in South Philly.  Right.  Send one of the most glamorous and sophisticated fashion models of the past fifty years to canvass in a blue-collar neighborhood dominated by stubborn, ill-mannered Italians.)  And then there was that Trump commercial his campaign ran during NFL games attributing his own policy to provide transsexual surgeries for prisoners to Kamala Harris, which the Harris campaign never refuted.

We were all fooled into expecting a Harris victory.  We failed to see the warning signs right before our eyes.  But on cable TV, many commentators acted like they had actually been expecting a Trump victory all along after actually having bashed Trump regularly, and nowhere was this more apparent than on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." There, host Joe Scarborough, a fierce Trump critic, and his guests, who included Chris Matthews and Donny Deutsch, were excoriating Democrats for giving blue-collar voters short shrift and acting snooty and smug.  And this attitude persisted for the next couple of weeks.

Then the other shoe dropped.  This past Monday, Scarborough and co-host/wife Mika Brzezinski revealed that they had had an audience with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago retreat over the weekend. 

Brzezinski told her and Scarborough's viewers that, in light of Trump's victory, it was necessary to re-open communications with the unscrupulous real estate tycoon, Brzezinski and Scarborough having had a cordial relationship with him before he was a presidential candidate in 2016 and having frequented Mar-a-Lago at the time they began their romantic relationship.

In other words, they were scared stiff of the looming Trump Mark Two administration and went to Mar-a-Lago to seek his mercy.  

Brzezinski said that even though she and Scarborough continue to have "deep concerns about . . . Trump's actions and words," about 76 million Americans did vote for him, so it's "time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him." She insisted that they had told Trump that they would continue to "push back hard" on him when the situation called for it.

"Don't be mistaken: We're not here to defend or normalize Donald Trump," Scarborough said. "We're here to report on him, and to hopefully provide you insights that are going to better equip all of us in understanding these deeply unsettling times."

What's deeply unsettling is that Joe and Mika would go as far as to prostrate themselves before Trump and surrender their integrity.

Scarborough, whom Trump has falsely accused of being involved in a murder, and Brzezinski aren't so much covering Trump as they are covering their rear ends.  What's worse is that they know what they're doing here.  They have backgrounds as journalists that pre-date their MSNBC morning program.  Scarborough ran a local newspaper in his hometown of Pensacola, Florida when he represented it in the U.S. House; Brzezinski had been a reporter for CBS and was in Lower Manhattan on 9/11.  What they did here suggests what would have happened if Edward R. Murrow had been reporting from Paris instead of London during World War II and had sought a conciliatory meeting with Marshal Pétain.  The couple forfeited their obligation to speak truth to power so Trump wouldn't go after them.  This comes after Scarborough had ridiculed Trump for being a loser whose MAGA allies kept losing key elections each year from 2017 on.  It comes after Brzezinski stood up for the rights of women against the misogynistic Trump and reported on the strides of older women with her "Know Your Value" project.  It's a pity she doesn't know hers.

Conclusion:  Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski had to choose between getting into trouble with Trump or dishonoring their profession.  They chose dishonor.  They will get trouble.

And you can count me among they many viewers they've lost.  So what?  Their program, at four hours, is too long, and the third hour is merely a repeat of the first.