Morning Joe hosts talk media in the Trump era

Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, came to Hopkins to discuss politics and the media. The Office of the Dean of Student Life sponsored the talk on Thursday, April 6.

Scarborough and Brzezinski reflected on their current political outlook, the past presidential election and their experiences working in broadcast media.

Brzezinski said that Republicans and Democrats used to socialize and enjoy debating one another, but now they struggle to work together. She asserted that this mistrust fosters an unproductive political environment.

Scarborough agreed that the two parties have historically been able to set aside differences in order to run the government.

“What did we do in the 90s? We balanced a budget for the first time in a generation,” he said. “ We passed welfare reform, we passed regulatory reform, we reformed the tax code.”

He added that the current 24-hour news culture has exacerbated this partisanship.

“You can choose what news you want that reinforces all of your pre-existing prejudices, all of your pre-existing ideologies,” Scarborough said. “Then by the end of the day, your political opponent is not wrong; Your political opponent is evil.”

The increasingly rapid pace of the news cycle as opposed to two or three years ago has changed  the nature of broadcast media. He said that events like the recent American missile strike against a Syrian airbase, which would have been massive news for an entire week, are now everyday occurrences.

“That is what every day is like in the morning at our jobs, and it’s been that way since the election,” Scarborough said. “I don’t know if it’s ever going to slow down. I will say though that most people like me that have spent a lot of their adult lives in Washington simply don’t know [if] this is sustainable.”

Brzezinski and Scarborough have known U.S. President Donald Trump for over a decade, and Scarborough stressed that the Trump they knew is the opposite of the reality TV persona he takes on. According to Scarborough, the way he talks about himself on TV is not what he is like in person.

“[On TV he is] always talking about himself, always exaggerating, and sometimes lying. But, the Trump we knew for over decade would come to all your book parties and all your events,” Scarborough said. “And all he’d do is talk about you.”

He also shared several positive encounters with Trump to illustrate the inconsistencies in his personality.

“This isn’t to tell you that Donald Trump is doing a great job as President,” he said. “This is to explain our frustration and how maddening it is that this guy has chosen the route he has chosen.”

Brzezinski stated that she did not vote for Trump and doubted he would be a good president. She pointed out the difficulty of trying to report on him.

“We get maligned in the media for having a relationship with this president, but we’re trying to cover [him],” he said. “We’re trying to keep an open mind, we’re trying to help, and it is one of the most frightening things we’ve seen in our political media careers.”

Scarborough reflected on how viewers expressed their displeasure every time he said anything positive about Trump.

“It’s not good for ratings,” he said. “But we don’t care because we’ve got a long term contract.”

Scarborough argued that even though the country is politically divided, comparing Trump to an autocrat is not completely accurate.

“For people who thought that Donald Trump is going to be an autocrat, or a Nazi... for people who think that, look back over the last 60 days, and what’s happened?” Scarborough asked.

He explained that Trump does not have absolute power. Scarborough pointed out that Trump’s main executive order was challenged by the judicial branch and that his health care bill was stymied by his own party. Scarborough cited an NBC poll from last month, which reported that even though 74 percent of Americans think the country is more politically divided than ever, 79 percent want their representatives to compromise.

During the question and answer segment, one audience member asked about how the lines have been blurred between journalism and entertainment in the mainstream media.

This led to a discussion about how political figures can affect the mainstream media. Brzezinski believes that there are many people on television who cannot say what they think.

“There are relationships and there are fears in the media that have been preyed upon and played upon by politicians,” Brzezinski said. “I think it’s why the media is in question and why Trump does have a little bit of a grab with people about fake news.”

Another audience member asked why Trump was covered more by news outlets than Democratic presidential candidates like Senator Bernie Sanders or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Scarborough and Brzezinski spoke about how some candidates were more open to media than others and how it was difficult to reach the Clinton campaign in particular.

“We had a landscape where a lot of candidates, including Hillary Clinton, were so locked in their boxes and so controlling,” Brzezinski said. “Joe and I had to fly in a rickety plane and land on a dirt road in South Carolina to get 17 and a half minutes in the back of a school with Hillary Clinton.”

Brzezinski said that the Clinton campaign actively worked to suppress any criticism against it by Morning Joe.

“When I was saying the Clinton campaign was arrogant, they don’t have this thing won, that they don’t have a message and they haven’t had one for two years, they did threaten me,” she said. “They did call in. They did say she’d never do an interview with Morning Joe as long as we worked that way.”

Brzezinski and Scarborough said that they gave every candidate the opportunity to come on their show and talk. However, they were aware that Trump knew how to control the media better than anyone.

“You go back, his statements, whether it was on John McCain or Megyn Kelly or Mexicans or whatever the insulting comment was, it was on a Friday and Saturday,” Scarborough said. “It made the headlines on Sunday mornings. They talked about it on all the Sunday shows, which then set up the conversation for the week. By the time everybody caught up with what he said by Friday he was onto something different on Monday.”

Another audience member brought up Trump’s comments regarding sexual assault. Brzezinski said that even though his comments were horrendous, they were not surprised that his comments were not going to change the mind of his supporters.

“They were still going to vote for him,” Brzezinski said. “They knew it all. And one of the reasons why they didn’t care is that they feel they’ve seen this show before. It chips away at the moral code of our society — people are numbed to it.”

Another person in the audience asked how to break what he described as the “liberal bubble of the media.” Brzezinski and Scarborough responded that liberals need to break out from the insular confines of their neighborhoods, schools and social circles.

“Liberals need to walk outside the bubble and go to America. And we’re learning this the hard way,” Brzezinski said.

Scarborough and Brzezinski concluded by taking questions about the effect of Trump’s presidency on future political leaders and parties.

“I think we’re in for a massive reset, politically and morally, in this country, and I’m seeing the backlash,” Brzezinski said.

Scarborough responded by stressing that he was optimistic since the current climate will force people to reexamine what the nation’s values

“I’m more optimistic than I’ve been in a long time, because we’re forced to reexamine what this country’s about, what we stand for,” Scarborough said.

Scarborough predicted that America is going to have an independent president in the next 10 years, while Brzezinski challenged the women in the room to fight harder and think about running for office one day.

Freshman Sabin Karki came to the talk because he was interested in learning more about the mainstream media’s opinion, given the current political climate. Specifically, he appreciated their candidness, especially regarding the Democratic party.

“MSNBC is traditionally regarded as a very liberal leaning news site, but what we heard today, especially from Mika, was the failings of the DNC in this last election cycle and how we need to have a reevaluation, not only with our democratic principles, but the nation as a whole,” Karki said.

Abigail Johnson, a freshman, came to the event because she recognized Scarborough and Brzezinski from television. Johnson enjoyed when they talked about which presidential campaigns were more open than others.

“I was really interested in that, and I feel like you can’t really get that information anywhere else,” Johnson said.

Freshman Cristian Aguirre came to the event because he and his parents have watched Morning Joe for years. Aguirre liked hearing Scarborough and Brzezinski discuss Trump’s rhetoric.

“Because they both come from different political backgrounds, it was interesting to see how they could both reach a consensus about the general delivery of Trump, as opposed to the overdone commentary about his policies,” Aguirre said.