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Morning Joe host torches NBC for pulling out the show on Monday following Trump's assassination attempt
Morning Joe hosts criticize NBC for pulling show to cover Trump's assassination attempt.
MSNBC's ‘Morning Joe’ host, Joe Scarborough, publicly lambasted his network for pulling his show on Monday to cover the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump.
Scarborough expressed his frustration live on air Tuesday morning, stating that he and his co-host Mika Brzezinski were “surprised” and “disappointed” by the decision.
“We were very disappointed. And if we had known that there wasn’t going to be the one news feed from NBC News across all NBC News channels, Willie [Geist], we obviously would have been in yesterday morning,” he said.
Morning Joe threatens to leave the show
He also threatened to leave the show if it happened again. “Next time we are told there will be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs,” Scarborough declared. “And the news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show.”
The network had informed the ‘Morning Joe’ team that there would be one NBC News feed “in breaking news mode” across all NBC channels throughout Monday. However, the ‘Today’ show aired as usual on NBC that morning, and MSNBC hosts Andrea Mitchell and Chris Jansing hosted their regularly scheduled shows in the afternoon.
“If we had known that there wasn’t going to be the one news feed from NBC News across all NBC News channels … we obviously would have been in yesterday morning,” Scarborough said.
“Our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn’t happen, but it didn’t happen.”
NBC network executives decided to pull ‘Morning Joe’ to prevent any guests from making “inappropriate comments on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole” while discussing Trump's assassination attempt, per CNN report.
Scarborough is a longtime friend and ally of Joe Biden
Last week, Joe Biden called into ‘Morning Joe’ to criticize Democratic Party “elites” urging him to step aside. Trump and his supporters have long questioned the credibility of the left-leaning network. In 2020, Trump suggested Scarborough had committed murder, leading the host to ask Trump to stop watching the show “for the sake of America.”
Brzezinski said on Tuesday, “This show began, and continues 17 years later on being the place where you can go to have the hard conversations in a civil way.”
“So it seemed like, now more than ever, is a day, a time that we would like to be on. I think our viewers agree with that.”
