Joe and Mika sold out

The Warning will not be intimidated into submission by Trump. Ever.

This is a conviction-based publication with an American point of view that holds firm to the position that Donald Trump’s campaign was repugnant.

His lies were despicable.

His race-baiting was an abomination.

His threats of violence, revenge and retribution were fascistic, as were his calls to deploy the US military against an “enemy within.”

His malice prevailed in a plurality victory in which 74 million Americans voted against his cynicism, nihilism, constitutional betrayals, sexual assaults, criminality and non-stop threats.

Seventy-four million people heard the nonsense, processed the lies, and told Trump “no.”

We lost.

It does not, however, negate how Trump won, and the things he said and did. They were despicable.

They deserve condemnation, not ratification.

The victory was legitimate, but deeply dishonorable. The notion that the American people fell for a liar and a conman who ran a lowest common denominator campaign isn’t surprising to me. They hate hypocrisy that much.

It should be noted that “Morning Joe’s” Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s absurdist capitulation was neither a reboot of “Veep” or a “Saturday Night Live” sketch.

It took place on a day when Trump transition officials signaled that the US military will be deployed domestically to participate in Trump’s mass deportation scheme. This is happening while an egregiously unqualified team of MAGA clowns bear down on the Departments of Defense and Justice, as well as intelligence and public health agencies.

The Warning is a publication that means what it says, and says what it means. It doesn’t pull punches. Ever. It will never yield in a great fight or seek favor with a man whom Joe himself compared to Adolf Hitler:

This is not a reach, I can go back and talk about Nazi Germany and I do it without any concerns whatsoever. And if people can’t start drawing the parallels, well, you’re just stupid or you have your head in the sand, or you’re one of them.

Think about that.

What is it Joe?

Did you throw out the Nazi stuff because you thought it was good for ratings?

Or, do you just really like the view from Berchtesgaden Mar-a-Lago? After all, seven long years have passed since you walked its hallowed halls.

I’ll give credit where credit is due. I had never seen these clips of Mika coddling Trump and cooking up questions with him until I watched the clip below from the “Megyn Kelly Show.” Here’s how she sees it:

The plain truth is that many people who work in media are afraid right now. They are afraid of losing $10,000,000.00 annual salaries — or two, if the personalities are married co-hosts who control four hours of television on a network where trust was just immolated by a neutron bomb of their own detonation.

Some people are terrified by the loss of influence, access to power, privilege, or whatever else they fear may be denied them at the whims of Donald’s court.

William Yeats spoke to this:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Nikki Haley, ironically, saw it this way, which she posted on X:

Let’s be clear, Joe and Mika didn’t suddenly see the light, they saw their ratings. They realized they needed Trump for their survival.

Here is how my friend

Chris Cillizza

sees it:

The Morning: Mika and Joe go to Mar-a-Lago

Looking back over the last decade, there are few institutions that have done more to help Donald Trump dominate America’s culture than the sanctimonious, dishonest and hypocritical news media executives who sought clicks, when the public needed information and insight.

Perspective influences perception. People see things differently.

How do you see it?

I think the meeting was a very significant and very pathetic marker that will be remembered as an unsurprising milestone on the highway we are all going to roll down together. It will transform us in many ways.

There is one fundamental change already underway. For the first time since the McCarthy era, broadcasters and media executives are terrified of offending power. They are terrified of their government, reprisals and Trump. They are afraid of lawsuits, their own newsrooms, which have been radicalized during the Trump era, and obliteration in a brutal market. Fear does not bring out the best in any person or organization. Ever.

Here is a thought experiment regarding Mika and Joe and their rationale for their visit to Mar-a-Lago since the New Year’s Eve party of 2017: had Harris won, would they have reached out to seek understanding with the defeated Trump — “America’s Hitler,” as Joe called him?

Of course not.

Donald Trump ran against the excesses, hypocrisies, silliness and arrogance of America’s political and media elites.

Can you imagine the disdain and repugnance Trump felt when they genuflected in front of him?  The only thing missing was a motorcycle jump over a shark tank.

Donald Trump expects acts of submission from his followers and penance from his critics. He will get none here, but the lineup is going to be quite long over at the corporate media window where good behavior means idolatry of Trump, maybe an interview, and the sweet taste of a ratings sugar high.

No thanks.

Had Joe and Mika thought their capitulation through more thoroughly they would have realized that everything they say from now on has been compromised by their weakness, neediness and mind-boggling reversals.

What are we to think about “Morning Joe’s” long soliloquies denouncing fraudsters like Lindsey Graham and moral grandstanding about everything and everyone who capitulated to Trump?

What about when Joe said this — that “this version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever”?

Just three months after this, following Biden’s disastrous debate performance, he changed his position, and said this:

We’ve been asking, ‘Why is this race close? We have no idea why this race is close.’ We saw last night why this race has been close, and why I fear Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States, unless things change.

They look different now, n’est-ce pas?

The prime requirement at this moment in American media is courage. Joe and Mika have none between them because courage is powered by conviction, not opportunism. The masks have slipped away.

Did NBC network executives know about the meeting? Did they sanction it? Or, did they demand it?

Trust, as the old saying goes, is gained in drops and lost in buckets.

But then again the difference for Joe and Mika when it comes to Hitler Trump is apparently that they were against him before he had power, but now that he has it again, they are for him. Too strong?

Here’s what I think: Trump meant every word of what he said he was going to do. That is going to be perfectly clear 90 days from now.

Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski sold out. It’s as simple as that. Power is like a crack pipe. If access to the pipe gets taken away, people will do crazy things. When they reach for the crack and whatever contraption that they jerry-rigged they might even say that the reason they had to smoke it is for all of us.

Maybe.

Or maybe watching just enables the addict.

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