Nothing good comes from fear
There is an enormous credibility crisis at MSNBC caused by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. It will not pass. Breakfast at the Berghof was a shattering event.
Reflect on the perversity and derangement of this anonymous statement from a “Morning Joe insider:”
It was f---ing worth it.
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski doubled down on their posture on Tuesday. Scarborough declared that there’s a “massive disconnect between social media and the real world,” proclaiming that they had heard from people “all over the world” praising their meeting with “Hitler,” er, Trump.
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I’m going to do my best to articulate how out of touch with America, Americans, reality, and at some deep existential level their place within it, Joe and Mika have become.
John Berman at CNN contextualized it this way, choosing to use the space time continuum as his jumping off point:
You might know me from a cable morning show. Though not the one that might soon have a defense secretary who paid a woman that accused him of sexual assault, nor the one that just sent two anchors to Mar-a-Lago, then talked about it like it was the Yalta summit.
I used to think the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos was the most out-of-touch place on Earth, but it may just be the “Morning Joe” set.
Shining above it in a perfect world would be a star of Bethlehem, marking the exact spot below which lies the ruinous legacy of the just-concluded access media era of American politics. It will be recalled as the time when corporate journalism became handmaiden, sycophant and business partner to the most powerful interests and people in America.
Then it imploded, but not before delivering a second term to Trump.
The era during which news organizations and the most storied brands in American journalism became the trophy sport of billionaires with good intentions high on platitudes is also over.
Running a newsroom in America is going to take a lot of fortitude and character. Most of the people running them today are inept, feckless and completely out of their depth. This is a moment for tough, smart, serious and principled people.
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are afraid.
This should be taken seriously, and not discounted in any way shape or form by anybody, including their most vociferous critics and haters, of which I am absolutely not one.
In fact, I was at their engagement party and have had many warm interactions with them over the years. It is difficult to criticize friends, but the exigencies of this moment require straight talk above all else.
Joe and Mika are Americans, and no American should be afraid of their government for acts of conscience, such as speaking up and out. According to one of America’s preeminent media reporters, Dylan Byers of Puck News, Joe and Mika are debilitated by fear.
Think about that.
They are legitimately terrified of the man about to become president in 2025 America — even though they make tens of millions of dollars a year, and host four hours of network television a day.
Nothing good comes from fear. It is an ugly emotion and a precursor to panic, betrayal and erratic judgment.
Fear captures people and holds them hostage. Sometimes, it doesn’t let go. When it takes hold it can make the world very small, very dark and very isolating.
Their fear has destroyed their show.
They went to Mar-a-Lago for fear or retribution when their job required them to demonstrate toughness and courage. They failed in a moment of truth. It doesn’t make them bad people, but it renders them unworthy of the moment and their audience, which has collapsed, according Beyers:
Meanwhile, the Morning Joe audience, already at a post-election nadir, dropped 17 percent in the hour after Joe and Mika revealed their Trump meeting. The following day, the show’s ratings were down 38 percent from this year’s average.
It’s not coming back.
Joe and Mika have broken trust, and the price is high for that in a trust industry.
What lies ahead isn’t going to be a game.
According to Byers:
After all, Joe and Mika’s paeans to diplomacy belied the true motivation for their visit to Mar-a-Lago.
In fact, the couple made the trek to Palm Beach because they feared retribution, a fact that has thus far only been alluded to by CNN’s Brian Stelter.
This week, sources with direct knowledge of Joe and Mika’s thinking provided me with more details on those fears that, in addition to underscoring the batshit-crazy nature of this moment in American politics, also offer insight into the potential chilling effect that Trump’s return to the Oval Office might have on the news media writ large, and especially MSNBC.
Since Trump’s victory on November 5, Joe and Mika have privately told friends that they’re worried the incoming president will seek revenge for their criticism of him during the campaign.
Those concerns became far more acute last week when Trump nominated Matt Gaetz for attorney general.
That same day, Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon suggested that Gaetz would go after MSNBC for trying “to destroy” Trump. “You try to imprison Trump, you try to break Trump. He’s not breakable,” Bannon said on his podcast. “You couldn’t destroy him. And now he has turned on you. And he’s put a firebrand in charge of main justice, Department of Justice, and you’re going to have to live with it.”
Specifically, Joe and Mika have told friends and associates they’re afraid that Trump and Gaetz will resurrect a decades-old, totally bullshit, birther-level conspiracy theory about the death of Lori Klausutis, a 28-year-old intern in Scarborough’s former Florida congressional office who died in 2001 from complications relating to a heart condition, and use it to apply legal pressure on Scarborough and otherwise make his life a living hell….
Despite the baseless nature of the conspiracy theory, Joe and Mika “are petrified of retribution and of Gaetz opening an investigation into Joe and the intern,” one source with knowledge of their concerns said. “That’s what this was about. It has nothing to do with ratings or Comcast. It’s all about fear of retribution and investigation.”
Another source close to the matter said Joe and Mika believed that by meeting with Trump, they could assuage his potential desire for reckless payback and thus nuke any possibility of having to endure the headlines of a Gaetz witch hunt or legal torture campaign.
Self-interest above national interest is the shared ethos of America’s power class. It is why the American people hold so much of the American elite in such abject contempt.
Though “Morning Joe” may be soft and lacking conviction, their fears are not unjustified, and have just been confirmed by their employer.
It is said that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the idea that there is something more important than fear at stake.
For Joe and Mika it turned out nothing was more important than the fear except them. They were powerful people, who perfectly suited a moment of time now gone. Gadfly journalism and clique curation have their place, but it won’t be morning television on MSNBC because there won’t be an MSNBC anymore.
Comcast is a $164 billion market cap company, which just put its cable businesses up for sale for $7 billion.
Why?
Why now?
Fear.
Had Harris won, MSNBC would likely not be on the market.
This is an astonishing moment in the United States of America and a very real one —unlike the imaginary calls from Joe and Mika’s friends from around the world.
What their real friends would have said to them was “you did what you had to do,” but the ethics required in the moment demand more stamina than drama and more grit than celebrity posturing and newsroom cosplaying.
The chaos around us is everywhere. It has accrued to Donald Trump’s benefit because of the corporate media and the tragic paradox that the true threat to America is strengthened by the winds that precede catastrophe.
Instead of weakening the demagogue, danger and trouble give him more ammunition. Fear is a contagion, and people will give up almost anything if they become fearful enough, including their freedom.
This is why Franklin D. Roosevelt, America’s greatest leader in the 20th century, began his presidency with a clarion declaration:
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Through their submission, which they made willingly, they have given away their freedom to speak out clearly, directly, honestly and freely. It was an appalling decision for journalists, but that isn’t what they are.
They are morning television hosts, who preside over a breakfast club as stale as day-old toast. They kissed the a#@ of the most powerful person in the world, and did everything they conceivably could to make sure his ego was never ruffled, so that their nest would lie undisturbed. Contemptible doesn’t begin to describe it, and the price of it is Trump.
What they helped to engineer was the Trump presidency because what made Trump soar like an eagle was the hot air of cynicism wafting ever upwards, and now here we are.
It is important for you to know that Joe and Mika are outliers at MSNBC, which though poorly led, is exquisitely staffed.
Most people that I have met at MSNBC share Rachel Maddow’s integrity. People like Nicolle Wallace. They lead teams of dedicated, smart and passionate people who take pride in what they do and deeply respect their audience. They are the future at MSNBC. They are the lifeboat. The country needs them. You need them. They are not afraid, and neither should you be.
Donald Trump’s inauguration will not kill democracy like an auto ignition button turns off a car engine.
It is more accurate to say that Donald Trump will use his power to assault freedom and liberty for his own gain. His goal will to be accumulate as much power as quickly as possible by attacking every law, norm, institution and individual who has opposed him by inflicting consequences aimed to silence and stifle dissent.
His extremist movement has a plan to fundamentally dismantle the American civil service within six months. He will fill the government with people who have a higher loyalty to an individual — Trump — than the US Constitution. It is a dangerous situation, to say the least.
When reporters, writers and members of Congress are intimidated by a party, a movement or a mob of thugs, their democracy is stripped from them, as it is from the 40 percent of the country who don’t have $400 for an emergency. Tens of millions of Americans are imprisoned by algorithms. Millions more can’t open a savings account because the biggest banks in the world don’t think they are worthy enough to have one. They are called the “unbanked,” and are sloughed off to cash-checking centers and payday lenders. They lost their democracy a long time ago.
Joe and Mika could have used their powerful platform to stand up for those Americans and to preach a gospel of idealism. Instead, once they got to the top of the hill, they became afraid of losing the view. They collaborated with the vicious man who assailed them to cut a deal that cuts you out when you need to know that someone is going to tell you the truth about what is about to happen.
What is about to happen is life and death. The stakes are very high.
There are three quotes that deserve reflection and contemplation in a moment when an American fascist stands victorious, having secured a plurality victory after barnstorming the country spreading a venomous gospel of racial malice, delusions, threats and division.
Dorothy Thompson was an eyewitness to the collapse of democracy at the edge of freedom’s supreme test. It stands far away in memory, at the outer edge of a long human lifetime. The lessons and their harshness have not abated with American amnesia towards them.
When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily, by default, it can never be recovered.
Peace has to be created in order to be maintained. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.
There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, and the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of the happenings.
Dorothy Thompson was the first American journalist to both interview Adolf Hitler, and be expelled from Nazi Germany.
She understood fear very well as she watched it disintegrate the sinews of a society like an acid-eating metal during the rise of fascism.
She would have perfectly understood the decisions by LA Times’ owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and The Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos to intervene in their newspapers’ editorial process and stop the tradition of political endorsements. Simply, Bezos cares more about his boat and his business interests than he does about the First Amendment.
Both billionaires have made a business decision, and have decided to protect themselves and their interests by getting in line. They will be expected to stay in line, and the days ahead will mark a sudden and decisive change in American culture. Make no mistake, there will be a price for speaking up and out. The era of blacklists and reprisals stands right around the corner.
I will resist it, and if you want to resist it too, then I hope you will subscribe, support and share The Warning.
I will be a target for retribution, along with a relatively small number of people who have dared to oppose Donald Trump.
We will be targeted by violence, threats of violence, and government retribution for asserting our God-given right to dissent and oppose.
Over the past seven years, I have been advised by the FBI that I was on the target list of a Trump-inspired bomber, been subject to character assassination and assassination bait with flyers accusing me of being a pedophile and a grifter.
Human excrement was mailed to my home, and ultimately, the place where my children sleep became public in a news story on Fox, other right-wing media outlets and also with The Associated Press — a supposed MSM organization. This drove more threats and compelled me to move.
I am not alone.
Everyone who has spoken out against Trump has been threatened, abused and harassed by a vicious mob often incited by Trump, who has made clear that he will use his power to punish his opposition and destroy dissent. All of this is designed to intimidate critics into silence, and force them to abdicate their constitutional rights to speech, assembly and conscience through acts of coerced capitulation.
Humiliation and personal debasement are the price of safety. The mob boss wants his vig, but mostly he wants the neighborhood on edge. Fear is the tool that controls the frightened and leashes the cowed and broken.
The right response to fear is not submission. This moment calls on every American to do what every American patriot has always done at the hour when the bell tolls. It is to answer the call of tyranny with the cry of “NEVER!”
For me, the aggression of MAGA extremists simply increases my defiance.
I do not fear Trump, and I will not fear Trump.
Instead, I will tell the truth about Trump. I will not back down.
Donald Trump has threatened Americans for nine long years.
One thing is for sure. I’ll go to Mar-a-Lago and get on my knees for Donald Trump when hell freezes over.
I guess that’s the main difference between The Warning and “Morning Joe.”
It isn’t the size of the show that matters, maybe. Instead, perhaps it’s the fight inside.
Support us. This platform will stand for you.
I sent emails to Joe and Mika. I feel I can’t just sit and bit$$ about things that I don’t like. I’m writing and calling my congressional reps every week now as well as others who I believe need to hear from us citizens. I read your words about Joe and Mika and fear. While I am always grateful for your words, I am not sure I agree totally. Ok. They fear retribution. Or, do they fear losing their salaries? I worked for Head Start for many years. Project 2025 calls for abolishing Head Start. Low income families will suffer. The children will suffer. They have something to fear really. Im 76. I don’t know what Oz will do to Medicare but I’m betting it won’t be good. We have real fears but unlike Joe and Mika, we don’t have millions in our bank accounts to help assuage our fears. We don’t have big bank accounts that will carry us forward. They do. I have no respect for them, I believe they have zero integrity. I respect you because I think you have real concerns about you and your family’s safety and well being, but you are “feeling the fear and doing it anyway”! That takes courage and integrity. And I thank you sincerely. My husband and I have real fears about the future of our beloved country. We are not sure things will get better while we are alive. But I know I will stand with you, Steve, and others like you and I will not be silenced. We must unite. I’m not sure how we will do it but I know we can.
Joe and Mika are not journalists. They are “personalities”. They’re free to do whatever they like in the pursuit of ratings or personal enrichment, and we are free not to watch them because they have not got much to contribute in these fraught times.