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‘Isn’t Going to Bring Audience Back’: Morning Joe’s Mar-a-Lago Meet a Ratings Hail Mary?
The hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” are under fire after announcing Monday they visited President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, telling viewers it’s “time to do something different,” and that “threatening” the now-President-elect with prison (they did not name any of his crimes, alleged or convicted,) hasn’t worked. Some critics have suggested the visit by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski was an effort to shore up the network’s sagging ratings, while others blasted the attempt as “access” journalism.
Jeff Jarvis, the longtime journalism expert and CUNY professor (now retired) called the couple’s move a “betrayal of their colleagues, democracy, and us all. It is a disgusting show of obeisance in advance.” (Obeisance is generally understood to mean bow down, or offer deferential respect.)
Political commentator Craig Crawford responded, “Autocrat scholars call this Anticipatory Obedience.”
Jarvis appeared to sum up the Mar-a-Lago meeting as an effort to gain “access.”
“Oh, Lord. Joe and Mika went to Mar-a-lago. ‘What we did agree on,’ Mika said, ‘was to restart communications.’ Access. ‘He seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats.’ Credulity. They revert to their mean.”
READ MORE: Trump: Prepared to Declare ‘National Emergency,’ Use Military for ‘Mass Deportations’
Jarvis also blasted Scarborough and Brzezinski for not having on their Monday morning panel any pundit who would push back against them: “Of course, there is no one on the panel to ask, ‘How the fuck could you?’ as we all are at home.”
He also declared the couple created “The Scarborough doctrine,” which he described as, “You can’t root against the president of the United States without rooting against America.”
Scarborough, Jarvis declared, “won’t root against authoritarianism, racism, misogyny (against his own wife), fascism. He won’t root for the people and our Constitution. There you have it.”
“Was there any journalism to come out of this?” Jarvis asked. “No. The meeting was ‘on background.’ Joe assures they asked for an interview. Of course, they did: giving Trump just what he wants–airtime and attention. This is how they helped get him elected in the first place.”
“Right after that pathetic display, Mika reads headlines about attacks on LGBTQ people and Trump drawing up a list of military officers to court martial and there is no nod to the irony. Oh, yes, let’s get along–with the destruction of the nation.”
Nodding to a number of top MSNBC hosts, Jarvis remarked, “I try to envision Joy Reid, @maddow, @Lawrence, @NicolleDWallace, @chrislhayes, alongside frequent guests @esglaude, @MollyJongFast, and others watching @JoeNBC & @morningmika’s betrayal this morning. Did they throw coffee at their TVs or merely shake their heads, knowingly?”
MSNBC host, and legal contributor and correspondent Katie Phang, without naming names, posted on social media: “Normalizing Trump is a bad idea. Period.”
Scarborough and Brzezinski told viewers that at Mar-a-Lago, “we talked about a lot of issues, including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents, and media outlets.”
And while they “didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of issues, and we told him so,” they “did agree” to “restart communications.”
They described Trump as “cheerful,” and “upbeat,” claiming that “he seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues.”
READ MORE: GOP Senator Says Gaetz Investigation Report Can Be Subpoenaed After Johnson Tries to Block
“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,” they said, not blaming Trump.
“What also does not work is threatening political opponents with arrest, harassment and even jail. That is a failed path,” they said—appearing to blame Democrats for wanting allowing the justice system and the rule of law to rule the day, while ignoring that Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened his political opponents with arrest, harassment and even jail.
“Recent history has proven that impeachments and trials turned those on trial into political martyrs and only make them more popular with the American people, just ask Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.”
“We’re not here to defend our normalize Donald Trump,” they concluded. “We’re here to report on him.”
Democratic strategist Max Burns lamented, “Don’t need to crack down on the free press when the free press will crack down on itself.”
Philadelphia Inquirer national opinion columnist Will Bunch added: “‘Morning Joe’ capitulation is another of my worst fears about life under Trump 47 – that those of us who plan to keep writing against Trump’s autocratic ways are going to be marginalized as ‘dead enders’ who aren’t getting with the program, which will make it easier to shut us up.”
Some have suggested the couple went to Mar-a-Lago to help the network’s ratings.
Puck’s Dylan Byers had shared some dismal statistics last week:
NEW: On Tuesday, one week after the election, CNN and MSNBC drew their lowest 25-54 demo ratings in nearly a quarter of a century….
CNN lowest since June 27, 2000
MSNBC lowest since August 7, 2001**excluding last year’s July 4 holiday
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) November 14, 2024
“CNN, MSNBC ratings plummeted after elections,” noted SiriusXM host Michelangelo Signorile. He warned, “Morning Joe bowing to Trump, & the rest doing finger-pointing & both sides coverage, isn’t going to bring audience back.”
Similarly, Mediaite editor-in-chief Aidan McLaughlin observed, “The thing about this is that it comes as MSNBC’s audience has collapsed. Imagine if a Fox News host announced they met privately with Biden when the network saw its audience flee after the 2020 election?”
Indeed, some on social media suggested they may be done with “Morning Joe.”
Political podcaster and progressive commentator JoJoFromJerz, who has nearly one million followers on X, offered up a profanity-laced response that effectively urged MSNBC to take “Morning Joe” off the air.
Media critic Susan Bordson explained:
“There are a few news shows I keep as standard in my dvr settings in case I want to check out segments or audit them later. @Morning_Joe was one of them. Today, I eliminated it from my @MSNBC recording list. Ethical news commentary does not require ACCESS practices.”
Podcaster Keith Olbermann, a former MSNBC host, also blasted Scarborough, writing: “Why is anybody surprised? Since 1998 I’ve said Scarborough was the worst person I’d ever encountered in this business. He proves me right, year after year. Today it has become Vichy MSNBC.”
“Let’s face it,” wrote former editor John McIntyre. “Morning Joe and Mika were self-important and tedious. Now we know that they are also craven, and there is no need to give them our attention.”
Watch the videos below or at this link.
Joe and Mika went to Mar a Lago to talk with Trump over the weekend. First face-to-face meeting in seven years. “We didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues and we told him so,” @JoeNBC says. “What we did agree on – was to restart communications,” @morningmika says. pic.twitter.com/lyWZWK4CwX
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 18, 2024
Here’s part two of @Morning_Joe‘s prepared remarks about the Trump meeting. “Don’t be mistaken. We are not here to defend or normalize Donald Trump,” @JoeNBC says. “We are here to report on him” and provide insights in “these deeply unsettling times.” pic.twitter.com/DTplzTSKhs
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 18, 2024
READ MORE: Backlash as Trump Skips FBI Background Checks — One Nominee Called ‘Likely Russian Asset’
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
