Dawn Thirty
Look, I taught public school for thirty-six years. That entire time, kids arrived at school about 7:15 in the morning. So I was at work by six-thirty for my entire life. (Except for the years when I was part of “zero-period” or held morning workouts, then I was there before six). Part of the “glamour” of retirement, was that I could sleep-in as late as I wanted, and stay-up to the “wee hours” if I was so inclined.
Old habits definitely die hard though, and the (now) four dogs don’t necessarily like to sleep-in. So while I’m not up at five am that often, 6-ish is still the normal wake-up time. I take care of dogs, I clean up the kitchen, and then, I write. And for more than a decade, the background “noise” to all of that has been the MSNBC morning show first called Scarborough Country, now Morning Joe.
Scarborough
If you don’t know, Joe Scarborough was the Republican Congressman from the Florida Panhandle. (He held the seat recently vacaterd by Matt Gaetz). He was elected as part of the Newt Gingrich “contract with America” crowd in 1994, in the middle of Bill Clinton’s first term as President. Scarborough was a conservative with a 95% rating, and resigned from the Congress in 2001.
He then moved to be a “conservative voice” on MSNBC, along with such luminaries as, believe it or not, Tucker Carlson and, more recently, Nicolle Wallace. His morning show began in 2003, and he’s been there ever since. In 2007, he brought Mika Brzezinski in as a co-host (along with Willie Geist), the daughter of Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Joe and Mika ultimately divorced their spouses and married each other in 2018. The ceremony was held in the National Archives main chamber, and officiated by Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings.
Issues
Not surprisingly, I don’t agree with Scarborough on a lot of issues. But he has come a long way, and even resigned from the Republican Party after the first election of Donald Trump. He often has other commentators on the panel that I enjoy, and sometimes his “rants” are challenging and even entertaining. But there are two issues where I really struggle with Morning Joe.
The first was back in 2015. Joe and Mika gave an open phone line to Donald Trump; hours of “free on-air time” for Trump’s riffs and rants. All he had to do was call in. And while both Mika and Joe criticized Trump to his “ear” on-air, they fell prey to a Trump tactic: better to have bad attention than no attention at all.
Those on-air conversations on Morning Joe served to legitimize the first Trump candidacy, and brought him the national attention he wasn’t getting from other candidates. They didn’t “elect” Trump, but the sure gave him a leg-up. But afterwards, one thing you could count on from Morning Joe: they were critical of Donald Trump. Trump responded to the criticism with personal attacks. He insulted Mika about her facial surgery, and even went so far to accuse Joe of complicity in the murder of one of his staff members.
In this last year Joe and Mika were outspoken in warning about Trump’s threat to American Democracy. They even put their own thumb on the scale. When Joe Biden was pushed off of the ticket, they supported Kamala Harris’s candidacy. And they were as despondent as the rest of us with the results of this month’s election.
Kiss the Ring
So I was shocked when I watched the two of them try to justify going to Mar-a-Lago for a private audience with Trump two weeks ago. Mika said; “Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally with President-elect Trump. And for those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back, why wouldn’t we?”
Comedian John Stewart spoke for the rest of us when he responded: “Uh…because you said he was Hitler.”
I guess we were warned in September. The “billionaire class”; Musk, Bezos, Jamie Diamon and even Warren Buffett were all “hedging their bets” against a Trump win (Mark Cuban stood out as the exception). They, especially Musk and Bezos, “swallowed” the events of January 6, 2021, and excused them away. Instead of standing up for Harris, many ducked. That is, except for Musk, who put his billions where his mouth was, into the Trump campaign.
Defend Democracy
Marc Elias, the lawyer to the Democrats, put it well. He compared the normalization of the Trump Presidency, to a character in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, who told how he went bankrupt: “Two ways. Gradually, then all at once.” Some Americans are “gradually” accepting the bankruptcy of a Trump Administration, gradually acting like it’s all “normal”. It is not. And some Democrats, commentators, and influential business leaders, are showing us the “gradual” way.
Elias fears that he may be on the wrong side of history. His efforts (outlined in his newsletter, Democracy Docket) are paid for in part by his subscribers, and he promises as long as he has their support “…it will not obey and it will not back down”.
Mika and Joe went to Mara Lago. Whatever “frank” conversations they had with the President-elect, their mere presence put them on the same side with Kevin McCarthy, and Lindsey Graham, and the dozens of others who opposed Trump, lost, then went to “kiss the ring”. Scarborough will say that they are recognizing the obvious, Trump is going to be the President. Others, like John Stewart, rightfully call out the hypocrisy. Either he was a threat to American democracy, or he wasn’t. Either they were lying then, or they are cowards now.
I wish I could stand CNN.
