The co-hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” expressed disappointment and anger Tuesday, a day after the network chose to air a block of breaking news coverage instead of their morning show.
Joe Scarborough said he and his colleagues felt misled by the network officials, who told them Sunday that all of Monday’s usual programming would be preempted by coverage of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump as well as other key stories.
Instead, Nicolle Wallace and Ari Melber hosted their regular daily shows at 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., respectively, on Monday as normal, and a panel of hosts — including Wallace, Melber, Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid — took over in the evening to cover the first day of the Republican National Convention.
“We were very surprised,” Scarborough said on-air. “We were very disappointed. And if we had known that there wasn’t going to be the one news feed, … we obviously would have been in yesterday morning. … We all wish we had been here yesterday.”
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The temporary pause of “Morning Joe,” a show that has reached new heights of political influence in recent weeks, triggered outrage in political-media circles, especially after CNN reported a claim that MSNBC brass were wary that a guest would make an impolite remark regarding the Saturday shooting at the Trump rally.
The network issued a lengthy statement on Monday “emphatically” denying this claim. The official explanation for the “Morning Joe” hiatus was a corporate decision to devote those hours to a unified feed of breaking news coverage shared across NBC, MSNBC and the streaming service NBC News Now, which the company said would best reflect the “gravity and complexity of this unfolding story.”
Scarborough’s comments on Tuesday represent an extraordinary pushback against a network, where he has worked for 21 years — comparable to the criticism leveled in March by NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd over the network’s hiring of former RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as an on-air contributor, an appointment that was soon reversed.
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Scarborough said he discussed the matter with network leaders but still wants clarity on what happened. He said his team “was not given a good answer” as to why the network’s plans changed.
But the host surmised that network executives changed their minds about preempting other programming after receiving widespread criticism for skipping over “Morning Joe” amid such a torrent of political news. “Morning Joe” was originally intended to be a cornerstone of the network’s coverage of the Republican convention.
MSNBC did not comment specifically on Scarborough but noted that more than 40 hours of programming across the network had been preempted by a unified breaking news feed focused on the Trump rally shooting.
“We want to be here for our audience, and we know you trust us,” co-host Willie Geist said, adding that he had been “suited up and ready to go” to appear on the show on Monday morning.
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Scarborough’s wife and co-host, Mika Brzezinski, also expressed disappointment that their show didn’t air Monday. She said that “Morning Joe” is a place for having civil conversations about hard issues.
“It seemed like now, more than ever, is a day, a time, that we would like to be on, and I think our viewers agree with that, so we continue,” Brzezinski said.
Scarborough then leveled what seemed like a challenge to the network.
“Next time we are told there is going to be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs,” he said. “And the news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show.”
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