Morning Joe Goes Full Trump While Defending Their Capitulation to Trump
Photo via screenshot of MSNBC
I have quite literally, made a career of badgering cable news to do the journalism they claim to want to do, and nearly a decade since I pivoted my career to media, I have seen very little fundamental change. There have been moments of hope, and those I have communicated with inside of cable news are infinitely more reasonable than those high above them in the org chart, but the over-arching paradigm of cable news is tilted away from journalism and towards capitalistic and imperialistic interests (tomato/tomahto amirite).
As much as any real journalist in MSNBC’s organization wants to put at least a patina of journalistic integrity on the proceedings in front of cameras paid for by the Democratic Party, there is nothing they can do in the face of the people who run these places. This is how capitalism works—capital and its chosen organizational allies make the decisions. And the decision at places ranging from The Washington Post to Morning Joe is that we need to bend the knee to that guy we were saying was a fascist three weeks ago, and who back in April, said there was no “meeting in the middle” with.
Jon Stewart took Morning Joe to task over this decision to “restart communications” between Donald Trump and the former Republican Congressman and the diplomatic nepo baby TV show hosts, as did many others, because they are clearly a couple of fucking hypocrites tilting in whatever direction that power takes them.
Morning Joe before the election vs. after.
Almost like they never really believed the fascism stuff! More on that here: https://t.co/pAytxDUrZQ pic.twitter.com/ANVjiBTzPd
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) November 19, 2024
The face Mika Brzezinski makes at 41 seconds after saying “why wouldn’t we” restart communications with a man who Scarborough called “Hitler” like she just said the most profound shit in the world gave me a mini-rage stroke the first time I saw it. Anyone who’s not opposed to Trump now is functionally allied with him, and any kind of “communication” will only result in what happened during the campaign with things like Trump’s border policy and Kamala’s macho “most-lethal” military pledges: making the Democratic Party look more like Trump. That these airheads don’t or won’t get that they are pledging to be unwitting useful idiots for Trump at this point makes me question the “un-” part of that phrase.
Today, Morning Joe is expressing a kind of defiance that can only be described as Trumpian, asserting to everyone that folks are actually telling them how awesome and brave they are for getting on all fours in preparation to lick Trump’s boot! Here is how Joe Scarborough opened today’s show:
I will say, first of all, thank you to everyone who was so kind last night. Yesterday I saw for the first time what a massive disconnect there was between social media and the real world because we were flooded with phone calls from people all day, literally around the world, all very positive, very supportive, ‘I understand what you did…’ etcetera, etcetera.But once in a while I would get a text or call from someone going, ‘Oh, man, I hope you’re doing okay.’ I would call them back, Eddie Glaude was one of them, I’d go: ‘Are you on Twitter?’ And he goes, ‘I am.’ I’d go ‘Well I’m not so sure we’ve had a good day. Mika had a wonderful event and it’s fantastic.’ All of us will do the best we can do and we’re all working towards a better America.
It is so heartwarming seeing a humble everyman and everywoman like Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski so embraced by the real world of Washington D.C. cocktail parties and Skull and Bones secret dungeons, in defiance of the fake news social media who is just out to get them for the heinous crime of loving America too much. As cable news watcher and recorder Aaron Rupar notes, Morning Joe’s Twitter account “has turned off replies to tweets and hasn’t posted clips from the show the last two mornings.” Things seem to be really going great over at Resistance HQ!