Morning Joe issued a stunning rebuke to a comment from one of their pundits in which he apologized on behalf of the liberal network to rivals Fox News over a joke about Pete Hegseth.
The show has come under fire in recent weeks after hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski patched things up with Donald Trump during a secret Mar-a-Lago summit.
Many, including “never-Trump” MSNBC commentator David Frum, are wondering if the network will censor progressives.
Frum, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush who has since turned left in the era of Trump, started the commotion by commenting on Defense Secretary nominee and ex-Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s reported binge drinking.
A recent one NBC news report claims that 10 current and former Fox News employees said they were concerned about his drinking and that they could smell alcohol on him “as early as last month.”
During Wednesday’s show, Frum joked that “if you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.”
In the next part of the show, Brzezinski apologized for Frum’s flippant comments.
“And before we go any further or a little earlier in this block, there was a comment on Fox News in our coverage of Pete (Hegseth) and the growing number of allegations about his behavior over the years and possible addiction to alcohol or problems with alcohol.” , she said.
Morning Joe issued a stunning rebuke to a comment from one of their pundits, apologizing to rivals Fox News on behalf of the liberal network
The show defended the network after a joke was made about Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth’s drinking
“The comment was a little too light-hearted for this moment we’re in.” We just want to make that comment. We want to make that clear.’
Brzezinski noted that MSNBC is a very different place than Fox News in terms of reporting, but felt it went too far.
“I just want to say that there are a lot of good people at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth, and we’re going to leave it at that.”
An angry Frum wrote about the entire saga in a column for The Atlantic Ocean published on Wednesday evening, entitled ‘The Sound of Fear on Air.’
He called the experience “disturbing” and “ominous” for the future of MSNBC, which will be spun off by owners Comcast.
Frum claimed he was warned not to repeat his comments, which he called a joke and a reference to a failed candidate for defense secretary from the 1980s.
“At the next commercial break, a producer spoke in my ear. He objected to my comments on Fox and warned me not to repeat them. I said something non-committal and got another warning,” he wrote.
Frum reasoned that if the allegations about Hegseth’s drinking are true, it is “a startling and shameful denial of responsibility in a matter of great national importance.” What is the correct language to say it?’
On Wednesday’s show, David Frum joked: “If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.”
The show has come under fire in recent weeks after hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski patched things up with Donald Trump during a secret Mar-a-Lago summit
“It is a most ominous matter when our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with attempts to appease,” he said.
He noted that he believed it was probably the end of his television career because he said so.
Richard Hudock, VP of Communications at MSNBC, responded to the controversy on social media.
“Joe and Mika have consistently expressed strong concerns and perspectives regarding Pete Hegseth’s nomination from the very beginning, and that position remains unchanged.
We would have responded the same way regardless of when these comments were made or which news organization was referenced.
We have great respect for @davidfrum and his contributions; he is a valued member of the @Morning_Joe family. We invite him to join us tomorrow to discuss this topic and other pressing news stories of the day.”
After Scarborough and Brzezinski’s Mar-a-Lago meeting, the morning show hosts were criticized by both Republicans and Democrats.
Both hosts defended the move after media colleagues also criticized the stars, with the pair claiming the response proved there is a “huge divide” between “social media and the real world.”
‘Yesterday I saw for the first time what a huge gap there was between social media and the real world, because we were inundated all day with phone calls from people, literally all over the world, all very positive, very supportive.’ I understand what you’re saying. did…’ ‘Said Scarborough.
“But every now and then I’d get a text or a call from someone saying, ‘Oh man, I hope you’re doing well.’ I’d call them back… I’d say, ‘Are you on Twitter?’ And he says, ‘I am.’ I’d say, ‘Well, I’m not, so we had a good day.’
“We will all do our best and we will all work to build a better America.”
The two MSNBC hosts, seen here, had met Trump after a long feud, with the pair long criticizing the president-elect as racist, sexist, fascist and comparing him to Adolf Hitler
After the meeting was announced, Brzezinski said they decided to reach out to Trump because their viewers expressed fear about 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.
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.
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 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 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.