Bush speechwriter hits back at 'Morning Joe' after show rushes to soften dig at Fox News

Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum triggered MSNBC's "Morning Joe" so much on Wednesday morning that they rushed to add an on-air apology by the end of the show.

Frum penned a column for The Atlantic on Wednesday afternoon sharing what happened. He was there to talk about his recent column, but the hosts asked him to weigh in on a discussion about Donald Trump's Defense Department nominee, Pete Hegseth.

A report from NBC News cited 10 former and current Fox News employees who shared ongoing problems that the weekend show staff had with Hegseth and his drinking.

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He recalled a major lesson from President George H.W. Bush's administration, in which an extremely qualified John Tower was nominated to lead the Pentagon.

"For that reason, his nomination collapsed in 1989," recalled Frum. "You don’t want to think that our moral standards have declined so much that you can say: Let’s take all the drinking, all the sex-pesting, subtract any knowledge of defense, subtract any leadership, and there is your next secretary of defense for the 21st century."

Frum then joked: "If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.”

The MSNBC producer appeared in his earpiece with a complaint and demanded never to say that again. "Morning Joe" feared offending Fox News staff.

Not long after the panel discussion, co-host Mika Brzezinski read an apology for Frum.

"I just want to say there’s a lot of good people who work at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth, and we will want to leave it at that," said Brzezinski.

Frum agreed there are good people at Fox News, but that it was NBC's reporting in which Fox employees criticized Hegseth as having a drinking problem.

"Many of those same good people have failed to report publicly that their former colleague, appointed to lead the armed forces of the United States, was notorious in their own building for his drinking," Frum wrote in response. "That would be a startling and shameful shirking of responsibility on a matter of grave national importance."

So, he asked "Morning Joe" hosts: "What’s the appropriate language to call it out?"

He then noted that the "Morning Joe" hosts rushed to Mar-a-Lago after Trump was elected. Sources told CNN the hosts feared Trump's retribution.

Meanwhile, Trump's candidate for the FBI, Kash Patel, reportedly has an "enemies list" that he could use the agency to attack. Frum also pointed out, "Trump’s candidate to chair the FCC has speculated about stripping licenses from platforms that displease the new administration. Interference with mergers and acquisitions to punish critics was a feature of Trump’s first administration."

Frum left it up for folks to decide for themselves whether he "overstepped."

Read the full column here.