A "Morning Joe" show insider claims the hosts' controversial visit with President-elect Donald Trump may have played a part in saving a free press.
Joe Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski took flak Monday after announcing they’d taken a trip to Mar-a-Lago for a face-to-face visit with the incoming president.
“They bent the knee,” one onlooker said of the pair who have spent years criticizing Trump.
But a source at the show told the Daily Beast the meeting “was f—cking worth it” — and claimed it may have caused a change in Trump’s opinion of the press.
“That doesn’t mean there are going to be earth-shaking changes,” the source said. “But the temperature has to come down.”
Trump has viciously attacked news since before he first announced his 2016 candidacy, including “Morning Joe’s” MSNBC network which he calls “MS Dem BC,” suggesting it’s connected to the Democratic Party.
But those criticizing the show’s hosts for taking the trip to Mar-a-Lago are “part of the problems we’re in,” the source said.
“You never turn down that opportunity,” they said. “That would be journalistic malpractice.”
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Another NBC source told the Beast, “Any practicing journalist or news host would take an off-the-record meeting with the incoming President of the United States. End of discussion.”
The source told the Beast that Scarborough and Brzezinski’s visit could likely be credited for Trump’s apparent toning down of anti-press vitriol. On Monday, he said on Fox that it “very important, if not vital, to have a free, fair and open media or press.”
“I agreed that it would be a good thing if such meeting took place,” Trump said about the meeting, which he said Scarborough had requested.
“Many things were discussed, and I very much appreciated the fact that they wanted to have open communication. In many ways, it’s too bad that it wasn’t done long ago.”