Leftwing “Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealed Monday they had an unexpected “personal” sit-down with President-elect Donald Trump in Florida to “restart communications” after being among his most vicious critics.
The MSNBC co-hosts, who have repeatedly bashed the Republican on-air over the years, said they had a face-to-face with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Friday — their first meeting in seven years — after reaching out in the wake of his election win.
“Five years of political warfare has deeply divided Washington and the country. We have been as clear as we know how in expressing our deep concerns about President Trump’s actions and words in the coarsening of public debate,” Brzezinski said as she opened Monday’s show with the stunning revelation.
“But for nearly 80 million Americans, election denialism, public trials, January 6th, were not as important as the issues that moved them to send Donald Trump back to the White House with their vote.”
“Joe and I realize it’s time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him,” she added.
Scarborough said the trio talked about a slew of issues — including “abortion, mass deportation and threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets.”
“We talked about that a good bit,” he said.
“It will come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show, has watched it over the past year or over the past decade, that we didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues and we told him so.”
Brzezinski then added, “What we did agree on was to restart communications.”
She went on to acknowledge that Trump “was cheerful and upbeat” during the private meeting — and that “he seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues.”
Scarborough, meanwhile, said sources had told him Trump may approach his second term differently given he can’t run for president again.
“Somebody close to Donald Trump told me this past weekend, this is a president who is not seeking re-election, so maybe, just maybe now could be time for both parties to get to work,” Scarborough said.
Addressing any potential backlash over news of their face-to-face, Scarborough went on to say the co-hosts — who have previously accused the Republican of being a threat to democracy — weren’t trying to “normalize” Trump.
“Don’t be mistaken, we are not here to defend or normalize Donald Trump,” he said.
“We are here to report on him and to hopefully provide you insights that are going to better equip all of us in understanding these deeply unsettling times.”
