MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” hosts awkwardly joked on Wednesday morning that they were forced to address several reports that the network could be sold.
A recent Wall Street Journal reported that Comcast was planning to spin off its suite of NBC Universal-owned cable channels, including the very network that employs them—MSNBC.
“Comcast is expected to announce Wednesday that it is moving forward with a plan to spin off its NBCUniversal cable TV networks, according to people familiar with the situation, acknowledging that it will be better off without a business that was once its crown jewel. The company, which last month said it was studying the idea, will separate off entertainment and news channels including MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Oxygen, E!, Syfy and Golf Channel. Those assets generated about $7 billion in revenue in the 12 months ended Sept. 30,” WSJ’s Amol Sharma reported.
After Mika Brzezinski reported the news straight, Joe Scarborough attempted to joke about the situation by mentioning his wife (Mika Brzezinksi, his co-host on the show) having a penthouse.
“I will say really quickly on this, you know, Drudge at the top said, like ‘News melts down!’ all this other stuff,” Scarborough said, referring to the news aggregate website the Drudge Report.
“I mean, I could be completely wrong: we could all be fired a year from now. When this happens, you never know what’s going to happen,” Scarborough said.
Brzezinski added, “Or tomorrow,” with what seemed to be a slightly forced laugh when she was clearly not thrilled with the idea of the show being in danger.
President-elect Donald Trump has provided additional details of his 90-minute post-election meeting with the co-hosts of far-left MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program that took place last week following his resounding victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.
Scarborough and Brzezinski discussed the meeting on their program on Monday, describing it as an attempt to restart a relationship that had been on ice for essentially seven years.
“On Friday we were given the opportunity” to meet with Trump and express concerns about some of his appointments, Brzezinski announced. “Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally with President-elect Trump. It was the first time we have seen him in seven years.”
Scarborough added that the three talked about “a lot of issues including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets,” a not-so-veiled reference to colleagues like Rachel Maddow, who has bizarrely insisted that Trump will put her in a concentration-style camp.
While both sides obviously don’t see eye to eye on many things, “what we did agree on was to restart communications,” Brzezinski added.
“We had not spoken to President Trump since March of 2016 other than a personal call Joe made to President Trump on the morning after the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania. In this meeting, he was cheerful, he was upbeat, he seemed… interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues. And for those asking why we would go speak with the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back, why wouldn’t we?” she added.
“Five years of political warfare has deeply divided Washington and the country. We have been as clear as we know how in expressing our deep concerns about President Trump’s words and actions in the coarsening of public debate. But for nearly eighty million Americans, election denialism, public trials, and January 6th were not as important as the issues that moved them to send Donald Trump back to the White House with their vote,” she said.
“Joe and I realize it’s time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but talking with him,” she added.
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Trump responded on Monday, telling Fox News that in order to “Make America Great Again,” it is “vital” to have a “free, fair and open media,” adding that he feels he has “an obligation” to the American people to work with the press, even those who had treated him “badly beyond comprehension.”
During the interview, Trump said he is in the process of transforming America into “the greatest and most powerful country in the world.”
“In order to Make America Great Again, it is very important, if not vital, to have a free, fair and open media or press,” Trump said before addressing his sit-down with Scarborough and Brzezinski.
“I received a call from Joe Scarborough requesting a meeting for him and Mika, and I agreed that it would be a good thing if such meeting took place,” Trump said. “We met at Mar-a-Lago on Friday morning at 8:00.”
Trump said the meeting was “extremely cordial.”
“Many things were discussed, and I very much appreciated the fact that they wanted to have open communication,” he said. “In many ways, it’s too bad that it wasn’t done long ago.”
Trump added that they “congratulated me on running a ‘great and flawless campaign, one for the history books,’ which I really believe it was, but it was also a campaign where I worked long and hard — perhaps longer and harder than any presidential candidate in history.”
