‘Morning Joe’ hosts take on-air swipe at NBC leadership after program was pulled from air

CNN
 — 

The hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” rebuked the network’s leadership on Tuesday, expressing dismay over the decision to pull the flagship morning show program from the air Monday and telling viewers that they were not provided clear answers about the matter.

Joe Scarborough, speaking alongside co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist, said that the show’s staff had been told on Sunday evening that all of MSNBC’s lineup would be pre-empted for a single NBC News feed in the wake of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. But, as he noted, “that did not happen.”

“We don’t know why that was that didn’t happen. Our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn’t happen,” Scarborough said. “But it didn’t happen.”

“We were also told it was going to happen throughout the day, and I guess, after there was such a strong blowback about yesterday morning, I guess they changed their plans,” Scarborough added. “We were very surprised, we were very disappointed.”

Spokespersons for NBCUniversal News Group and MSNBC did not immediately respond to CNN requests for comment on Tuesday morning.

CNN first reported Sunday evening that Cesar Conde, the NBCUniversal News Group chairman, had made the decision to pull the top-rated morning program Monday, in conjunction with Rashida Jones, the MSNBC president, and Scarborough and Brzezinski.

In the wake of the attempt on Trump’s life, some of the former president’s supporters have vehemently criticized the press and liberal media commentators for their hard-knuckled reporting, which has sounded the alarm on what four more years under the former president would look like.

MSNBC has, in particular, been blasted by Trump’s allies, putting the network in the spotlight. Some of Trump’s allies have gone as far as to attack the network’s parent company, Comcast.

The decision to pull “Morning Joe” was made with that political reality in mind. A person familiar with the matter told CNN on Sunday they moved to preempt the celebrated roundtable program over concerns a guest might make an inappropriate comment that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole. Given the breaking news nature of the story, the person said, it made more sense to continue airing rolling breaking news coverage in the fraught political moment.

“We want to be here for our audience, and we know you trust us, and we have ultimate respect for you guys,” Geist said. “So we are here today. I wish we’d been here yesterday.”

Brzezinski added that “Morning Joe” is a special program because it is “the place where you can go to have the hard conversations in a civil way.”

“And so it seemed like now more than ever, is a day, a time, that we would like to be on,” Brzezinski said. “And I think our viewers agree with that.”

Scarborough told viewers the show’s staff would cover news events in the future and threatened to quit if the program is once again pulled from the air.

“Let me just say, next time we’re told there’s going to be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs,” he said. “The news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show.”