MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski was spotted at an awkward moment on air when her co-host and husband Joe Scarborough criticized citizen journalist influencers during a bizarre rant Monday.
The Morning Joe host appeared shocked as Scarborough unleashed a foul-mouthed tirade against influencers and commentators who he claimed can get away with lying on social media, while “what reporters do matters.”
The intense conversation stemmed from a speech Axios CEO Jim VandeHei gave at the National Press Club on Thursday, where he called out Elon Musk for claiming the media has been replaced by “citizen journalists.”
VandeHei joined the Morning Joe show on Monday as the MSNBC team congratulated him on winning the Fourth Estate award alongside his publication’s co-founder Mike Allen, but the conversation quickly took a sharp turn.
After the Morning Joe team praised VandeHei, Scarborough immediately jumped on the bandwagon and reiterated the CEO’s comment he made last week about influencers “showing up on Twitter.”
As Scarborough got annoyed, he dropped a curse word, leaving Brezinski speechless.
“And like you said, this is what gets me,” Scarborough said, referring to VandeHei’s speech. “If someone shows up on Twitter or other social media and lies, they’re making mistakes – do you know what the cost of that is? Nothing. They’re doing it again.
“It actually helps them because algorithms are rigged, so you’re setting sh** in motion,” he added, as Brezinski jumped in her seat before looking away for a moment.
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski looked away during a Monday episode of Morning Joe as her husband and co-host Joe Scarborough delivered a bizarre rant
The intense conversation stemmed from a speech Axios CEO Jim VandeHei (right) gave at the National Press Club on Thursday, where he called out Elon Musk for claiming the media has been replaced by “citizen journalists.”
During his speech on Thursday, VandeHei defended journalism while speaking out against social media users — especially Musk, the owner of X (formally known as Twitter).
‘Everything we do is under fire. Elon Musk is on Twitter or X today every day and says, “We are the media. You are the media.’
‘My message to Elon Musk is: Bullsh**!
“You’re not the media, you have a blue check mark, a Twitter account and three hundred clever words don’t make you a reporter any more than I look at your head and see you have a brain and say you’re a The great tool makes me to a damn neurosurgeon, right?,” VandeHei added.
The veteran journalist then said that “being a reporter is difficult, very difficult.”
“You have to care, you have to do the hard work, you have to get up every day and say, ‘I want to get the closest to the truth, without any fear, without any favoritism.’
“You don’t do that by appearing on Twitter,” he explained.
Scarborough told VandeHei that what he said “still needs to be said” because there is a lot of “garbage flying around on social media.”
He delved even deeper as he called out specific media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and MSNBC.
“What The New York Times does matters. What The Wall Street Journal does matters. What Jonathan Lemire does matters. What the Financial Times does matters. What MSNBC News and MSNBC reporters do matters,” he said.
VandeHei agreed with Scarborough when he said journalists are not perfect.
“And that doesn’t mean there aren’t things we get wrong,” he said, adding that he was so “jumped” during his speech because of what he’s heard from reporters.
“I listen to so many reporters who feel like the industry is going to hell. No one trusts them, they are demoralized… And the truth is, we don’t have time to be demoralized!
‘We don’t have time to whine, we have to do our job!
“There is an information war going on,” VandeHei said, adding that “there are still tens of millions of people who depend on good reporting.”
Scarborough then referred back to those specific publications, stating that reporters who work for them “don’t have to worry” because they “print truth all the time.”
Towards the end of the segment, Brzezinski appeared to get her colleague to stop talking before ending the show
He then shocked his co-host with his language, before she intervened and said: “Right, the more you hate, the more you earn.”
VandeHei suggested that people should read media articles every day to determine whether they can trust them.
‘Use your own eyes: do you have the feeling that they try to get as close to the truth as possible in every story, and that they usually, if not almost always, do that?
“If they do, you can rely on them as a news source,” he added.
Towards the end of the segment, Brzezinski appeared to try to get Scarborough to stop talking as he continued to rant about the problems he sees in the industry.
“At some point people have to want to know the truth, and if they don’t want to know the truth, well, just walk around ignorant,” Scarborough said as his co-host continued to say “OK” earlier. closing the performance.