Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski has pulled back from using social media platform X, despite defending her meeting with newly elected President Donald Trump and encouraging fans to “talk to everyone.”
Brzezinski, 57, made what appears to be her last post on the platform, owned by Trump supporter Elon Musk, choosing to move to left-wing site Bluesky.
‘I have decided to leave X, but I would like to keep the conversation going. Join me on BlueSky!’, linking her new profile on the site.
It’s a far cry from the open-mindedness she has been preaching since meeting Trump.
On Monday, Brzezinski and her husband and co-host Joe Scarborough said on their show that they had visited Trump at his Florida home after a years-long feud.
Things came to a boil earlier this year after Scarborough compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, with their visit sparking anger among their liberal viewers and show staff.
Speaking of visiting for the first time The Daily Beast Podcast with hosts, Brzezinski said they met with Trump because people were “really scared.”
“The way I look at it is that people are really scared, that’s one of the reasons we went there. People are really afraid of Trump’s comments about political opponents. A lot of people are scared because of what happened with abortion.”
Brzezinski first spoke about the visit with The Daily Beast podcast, seen here, saying they met Trump because people were “really scared.”
Brzezinski has now moved her social media presence to the left-wing site Bluesky instead of X
‘I tried to think about it, I think everyone is so scared. Whether they are in the media or citizens of this great country.
‘I think everyone is scared, disoriented, scared of the future, and I think I could use the punching bag for that.
“I’d like to believe we’ll get through this, but I also have a lot of questions, and I want the opportunity to ask them.”
Her comments do not reflect the departure of X, which is owned by Trump’s closest ally, Elon Musk.
When asked whether the meeting has made her more hopeful, she says: ‘No, I have no illusions about that. I’m glad it happened. It’s good that it happened.’
“I am deeply, deeply upset and afraid for the women of this country, and not just the women of childbearing age. I will look for ways to work on this issue.’
In unveiling the meeting on Monday, Brzezinski said they decided to reach out to Trump because their viewers expressed fear over his election victory.
She added: “My father (diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski) often spoke to world leaders with whom he and the United States deeply disagreed. That is a task that both journalists and commentators share.
“Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different and that starts with not just talking about Donald Trump, but talking to him.”
Brzezinski said Trump was cheerful during their meeting and seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats.
In unveiling the meeting on Monday, Brzezinski said they decided to reach out to Trump because their viewers expressed fear over his election victory. She is seen here with Scarborough in 2015
Brzezinski said Trump was cheerful during their meeting and seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats
However, Scarborough concluded by telling viewers that they will not stop their criticism of the newly elected president.
He said, ‘Make no mistake. We are not here to defend or normalize Donald Trump.
“We are here to report on him and hopefully provide you with insights that will better equip us all to better understand these deeply troubling times.”
Trump told Fox News that he organized the meeting to “make America great again, it is very important, if not essential, to have a free, fair and open media or press.”
“I am not looking for retaliation, grandeur or destroying people who have treated me very unfairly,” he added.
“A lot of things were discussed and I really appreciated that they wanted open communication,” he said. “In many ways it’s a shame this didn’t happen a long time ago.”
Trump said both presenters “congratulated me on running a ‘great and flawless campaign, one for the history books.’
“The meeting ended on a very positive note and we agreed to speak in the future,” he said.
After the big reveal on Monday, their ratings fell by 15 percent overall and by a whopping 41 percent among 25-54 year olds.
Trump appeared on the show dozens of times before the couple fell out in spectacular fashion during the 2016 election cycle
The show went from 770,000 viewers on Monday to 680,000 Tuesday to 647,000 Wednesday per Variety.
Trump was a regular contributor to Morning Joe, and Scarborough was an early cheerleader for the billionaire maverick for the 2016 Republican nomination.
But relations soured when Trump won a surprise victory in the Republican primaries and began to look like a serious challenger to Democrats’ Hillary Clinton.
The four-hour morning show became a bastion of the Democratic establishment after Trump’s first term, with President Joe Biden routinely listening in as he did his morning exercises to watch his acolytes promote the party’s talking points.
Now that Trump is in the White House and Scarborough is engaged to co-host Brzezinski, he is beginning to cement his show’s identity as an outpost of opposition to the new administration.
The couple even recorded a Christmas album called “A Very Drumpf Christmas” of children’s songs that depicted the president as The Grinch Who Stole Christmas from Dr. Seuss.
It eventually caught the attention of the president himself, who issued a series of scathing criticisms, labeling Scarborough as “Psycho Joe” and his then-fiancée as “crazy Mika with a low IQ,” while mischievously claiming that she was “bleeding profusely from a facelift’ during a visit to his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Brzezinski later confirmed that she was recovering from cosmetic surgery during the trip.
And the feud intensified when the president revived long-debunked claims that Scarborough was involved in the death of his former congressional aide, who was found dead on his office floor in 2001.
An autopsy found that Lori Bolterstein Klausutis, 28, hit her head on a desk after collapsing from an undiagnosed heart valve irregularity, but Trump called for a new investigation into the matter.
The allegations earned Trump his first reprimand from Twitter, which would eventually kick him off the platform altogether in January 2021.