Opinion: The Cowardice Of 'Morning Joe' Hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski

More often than not, when someone utters the phrase "words matter," they're using it to justify their insistence that the public use some carefully constructed word or phrase meant to help the person feel better about themselves rather than improve the lot of those described in the phrase. Referring to people who are homeless as "unhoused" is ludicrous. A nicer-sounding word doesn't make the person without housing feel less shame. Believe me, I've had times in my life when I was as close as you can get to living in my car. Being called "unhoused" would not have lessened the shame. You know what would have made me feel better? Having housing.

I feel the same way about those on the Left who have randomly called Donald Trump or some of his supporters "Nazis." That word has a very specific meaning and the problem with calling Trump that has always been that in the mind of most Americans, when they hear the word Nazi, they think of concentration camps and killing Jews. And no matter what you think of the election results, I don't believe that is where we are headed under a Trump Administration.

Fascist is a much more accurate definition because it refers to people who believe in a government run by a strong man autocrat. And it seems reasonable to use that as a way to describe the MAGA movement. But because most Americans have only a passing acquaintance with history, they use Nazis and Fascists interchangeably. Or even worse, use Fascist as a way to describe political opponents who are clearly not Fascists. I recall many fellow Democrats describing Mitt Romney as a Fascist. And while Mitt Romney is many things I don't agree with, he never struck me as a lover of strongman autocrats. 

Still, if you're going to call someone a Nazi, then if you want any shred of credibility, you need to act as if you believe what you say.  That means treating that person as a danger, even if that stance requires you to give up some access or suffer a bit of career inconvenience.

Which brings me to Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who announced Monday morning they had traveled last Friday to Mar-A-Lago to hang with President-elect Donald Trump.

Now if you're not familiar with the MSNBC morning talk show Morning Joe, all you really need to know is that it is the most popular destination for Beltway journalists, politicians, and under-employed party strategists. And that is primarily because Morning Joe is the calm voice of conventional political wisdom. 

Fashionistas will tell you the most predictable way to know when a fashion trend is played out is to notice when it pops up on the racks at Walmart. And similarly, the best way to know when a new political idea has been focused grouped into a pile of room-temperature beige pudding is to watch when it shows up in a segment of Morning Joe. This is the show where conventional wisdom and predictable talking points exist above everything else. The fact the show is so popular with political insiders says more about the intellectual failings of our political class than it does about the insightfulness of morning news programming.




This is why I was fascinated by Joe Scarborough's increasingly obvious anger with Donald Trump over the final months of the election campaign. Scarborough can be cranky or even dismissive of people, but like a political Don Rickles, everyone knows he doesn't really mean it. So hearing him describe Donald Trump as a "Nazi" was an interesting shift of tone and after Trump won the election, I wondered how he, Mika, and the Morning Joe crew would react.

Today, I received my answer when Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski talked on Morning Joe about a Friday trip they made to Mar-A-Lago. And if you find that decision to be morally perplexing, then you have not been paying close attention to the stones-free approach of Joe and Mika.

"It was the first time we had seen him in seven years," explained Brzezinski. 

"We talked about a lot of issues, including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets. We talked about a good bit. And it is going to come as no surprise to anyone who watches this show, who has watched it over the past year or the past decade that we didn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues. And we told him so," added Scarborough.

"What we did agree on, was to establish communications," said Brzezinski. "My father often spoke with world leaders with whom he and the United States profoundly disagreed. That's a task shared by reporters and commentators alike. We had not spoken to Trump since March of 2020."

I have heard my share of backdoor self-important puffing up of egos, but listening to Mika comparing her role as cable news morning show co-host to that of her father, who has an advisor to LBJ and the National Security Advisor of the United States under Jimmy Carter, certainly requires an impressive amount of self-worth and/or self-delusion.

But let's unpack this a bit more. So Joe and Mika managed to get through the entire Biden presidency without speaking to Donald Trump. They were clearly capable of pontificating about the state of the union without speaking to the former president. And yet within ten days of him returning to the presidency, the duo are making the trek to Mar-A-Lago.

And hearing Scarborough, who just weeks ago was referring to Trump as a Nazi, talking about they "told him eye-to-eye" they disagreed with him, as if telling Trump he's wrong is on the same moral level as standing up in a crowd of Romans to say "No, *I* am Spartacus," is just embarrassing.

I get it. There was likely pressure for Joe and Mika to make nice with Trump and I am certain they were concerned they might be shut out of the new administration. And there are certainly worse things in the world than cravenly swapping your morals for a bit of career advancement.

But if you are going to publicly refer to someone as a Nazi - and I highly recommend you don't - then trying to "open up communications" with said Nazi is not just morally shaky, it is propping up said Nazi and giving him what he wants. And specifically when it comes to Donald Trump, few things in life are sweeter to him than having a formal critic cozy up to him and ethically bend the knee.

I can't say I'm shocked to learn Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are not just willing to visit on background with Donald Trump but can also find a way to describe the event as a textbook example of what journalists do. But it is an unsettling reminder that this is what often happens when a wannabe autocrat takes the reins of a democracy. There are plenty of journalists who tell themselves, "If I just keep feeding the alligator, maybe he'll eat me last."

And this week, Joe and Mike are feeding the alligator with shameless abandon.