Co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe program Mika Brzezinski on Friday responded to Mark Halperin's plea for "reintegration to society" with a sniff and a pivot, after the disgraced reporter, in his first interview in two years, apologized again for mistreating women. Halperin was an MSNBC contributor who was frequently on Morning Joe.
Brzezinski announced that the upcoming segment had been meant to focus on Senator Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, but after a just-completed interview with presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand -who has highlighted the issue of sexual harassment- she was instead going to air Halperin's comments about "his own personal situations and the terrible mistakes that he has made," and cut to the clip.
"I'd like to take the opportunity to again apologize to the women that I mistreated who told their stories and who were hurt by me," Halperin said. "Even someone who did the kinds of things that I did understands that harassment is wrong intellectually." Halperin said that after "hundreds of conversations," he now understood what many people instinctively grasped, and begged for his exile to end.
"I'm not done understanding myself or understanding this problem in our society," he said. "I feel like you know, that I've learned enough that hopefully I can be allowed to be reintegrated into society a little bit more and to be able to use the experiences I've had to be a productive part of making things better and contributing."
"Hmm," Brzezinski said as the cut ended. "Now to what we were going to talk about."
Watch the video below.
