Joe Scarborough went on a lengthy tirade against his critics, specifically targeting Morning Joe regular David Frum after the columnist suggested Scarborough was ‘scared’ of Donald Trump after apologizing for a joke on Wednesday’s show.
The saga began when Frum, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush who has since pivoted to the left in the era of Trump, made a joke about Defense Secretary nominee and ex-Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth’s reported drinking, saying: ‘If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed’
After co-host Mika Brzezinski apologized for the comment on-air, Frum wrote a column in The Atlantic later that day titled ‘The Sound of Fear On Air.’
On Thursday’s show, Scarborough was clearly angered by Frum’s attempt to paint himself and Brzezinski as cowardly toward the president-elect.
‘That wasn’t the sound of fear, that was the sound of civility. In saying that Mika had apologized, she didn’t apologize. She simply said it was too flippant,’ he said.
Scarborough added that ‘you can’t be fearful’ and that anyone who has worked with him at MSNBC or in Congress would tell you he’s not.
He doubled down on Brzezinski’s apology, saying that it was fair for her to apologize and that the joke was not acceptable.
The anchor then clearly wanted to address the criticism of himself and Brzezinski in the weeks since they made amends with Trump in a surprise Mar-a-Lago meeting.
Joe Scarborough rebuked columnist and Morning Joe regular David Frum after the writer suggested he was ‘scared’ of Donald Trump after apologizing for a joke on Wednesday’s show
Frum started the commotion with a comment on Defense Secretary nominee and ex-Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth’s reported drinking exploits, saying: ‘If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed’
‘We went down to talk to the President-elect. And people wrote articles that were just false. But you know what we did? We did the corporate thing. Corporate said, ‘don’t say anything. Just keep your head down.’ What did the royal say? Never explain, never complain. We did that.’
He then apologized if he felt they had blindsided Frum with their apology but reiterated that nothing they did was because of Trump, or anyone in a position of influence or power.
‘I always have Republicans say, ‘Oh, they’re telling you exactly what to say.’ No! Nobody’s once told me what to say here.’
The hosts then said that Frum, who was supposed to appear on the show to discuss the controversy Thursday, will appear to hash it out on Friday’s show.
Later Thursday, Frum posted to social media: ‘I want to stress: I am very sympathetic to the predicament faced by TV hosts. These are worrying times.’
The show has come under fire in recent weeks after hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski patched things up with Donald Trump at a secret Mar-a-Lago summit.
It has many, including Frum, wondering if the network is going to start censoring progressives after the show apologized for his joke about troubled Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth.
A recent NBC News report claims 10 current and former Fox News staffers said they were concerned about his drinking and could smell alcohol on him ‘as recently as last month.’
On Thursday’s show, Scarborough was clearly angered by Frum’s attempt to paint himself and Brzezinski as cowardly toward the president-elect
Later Thursday, Frum posted to social media: ‘I want to stress: I am very sympathetic to the predicament faced by TV hosts. These are worrying times.’ He will appear on Morning Joe Friday
On Wednesday’s show, Frum joked that ‘if you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.’
In the next segment of the show, Brzezinski offered an apology for Frum’s flippant comments.
‘And before we go to break or a little bit earlier in this block, there was a comment made about Fox News in our coverage about Pete [Hegseth] and the growing number of allegations about his behavior over the years and possible addiction to alcohol or issues with alcohol,’ she said.
‘The comment was a little too flippant for this moment that we’re in. We just want to make that comment as well. We want to make that clear.’
Brzezinski noted that MSNBC is a very different place in terms of coverage than Fox News but felt it went over the line.
‘I just want to say there’s a lot of good people that work at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth, and we want to leave it at that.’
A furious Frum wrote about the entire saga in a column for The Atlantic published on Wednesday night.
He called the experience ‘unsettling’ and ‘ominous’ for the future of MSNBC, which is set to be spun off by owners Comcast.
Morning Joe issued a stunning rebuke to a comment from one of their pundits, apologizing on behalf of the liberal network to rivals Fox News
The show defended the network after a joke was made about the drinking of Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth
Frum claimed that he was warned not to repeat his remarks, which he called a joke and a reference to a failed secretary of defense nominee from the 1980s.
‘At the next ad break, a producer spoke into my ear. He objected to my comments about Fox and warned me not to repeat them. I said something noncommittal and got another round of warning,’ he wrote.
Frum reasoned that if the allegations about Hegseth’s drinking are true, it’s ‘a startling and shameful shirking of responsibility on a matter of grave national importance. What’s the appropriate language to call it out?’
‘It is a very ominous thing if our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with efforts to appease,’ he said.
He noted that he believed it was probably the end of his television career for saying so.
Richard Hudock, MSNBC’s VP of Communications, responded to the controversy on social media.
‘Joe and Mika have consistently expressed their strong reservations and perspectives regarding Pete Hegseth’s nomination from the very beginning, and that stance remains unchanged.
We would have responded in the same manner regardless of when these comments were made or what news organization was referenced.
The show has come under fire in recent weeks after hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski patched things up with Donald Trump at a secret Mar-a-Lago summit
We have great respect for @davidfrum and his contributions; he is a valued member of the @Morning_Joe family. We invite him to join us tomorrow to discuss this topic and other pressing news stories of the day.’
Following Scarborough and Brzezinski’s Mar-a-Lago meeting, the morning show hosts were met with criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.
Both hosts defended the move, after media colleagues also slammed the stars, and the pair claimed that the backlash proved there is a ‘massive disconnect’ between ‘social media and the real world’.
After the meeting was announced, Brzezinski said they decided to reach out to Trump due to their viewers expressing fear over his election win.
She added: ‘My father [diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski] often spoke with world leaders with whom he and the United States profoundly disagreed. That’s a task shared by reporters and commentators alike.
Brzezinski shared that Trump was cheerful during their meeting and seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats.
However, Scarborough concluded by telling viewers they will not stop their criticism of the president-elect.
He said: ‘Don’t be mistaken. We are not here to defend or normalize Donald Trump.’
The two MSNBC hosts, seen here, had met with Trump after a long feud , with the pair long criticizing the president-elect as a racist, sexist, fascist, and likened him to Adolf Hitler
‘We are here to report on him and to hopefully provide you insights that are going to better equip all of us in understanding these deeply unsettling times.’
Trump told Fox News that he took the meeting in order to ‘Make America Great Again, it is very important, if not vital, to have a free, fair and open media or press.’
‘I am not looking for retribution, grandstanding or to destroy people who treated me very unfairly,’ he added.
‘Many things were discussed, and I very much appreciated the fact that they wanted to have open communication,’ he said. ‘In many ways, it’s too bad that it wasn’t done long ago.’
Trump used to be a routine contributor to Morning Joe, and Scarborough was an early cheerleader for the billionaire’s maverick bid for the GOP nomination in 2016.
But relations soured as Trump pulled off a surprise victory in the Republican primaries and began to look like a serious challenger to the Democrats’ Hillary Clinton.
The four-hour morning show became a bastion of the Democratic establishment after Trump’s first term, with President Joe Biden routinely tuning in while doing his morning exercises to see his acolytes promote the party’s talking points.
With Trump in the White House and Scarborough engaged to co-host Brzezinski he began cementing his show’s identity as an outpost of opposition to the new administration.
The couple even recorded a Christmas album called ‘A Very Drumpf Christmas’ with children’s songs portraying the president as Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.
It eventually attracted the attention of the president himself, who delivered a series of withering put-downs, labeling Scarborough ‘Psycho Joe’ and his then-fiancée as ‘low IQ Crazy Mika’, while mischievously claiming she had been ‘bleeding badly from a face-lift’ during a visit to his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Brzezinski later confirmed she’d been recovering from cosmetic surgery during the trip.
And the feud deepened when the president revived long-debunked claims that Scarborough had been involved in the death of his former congressional staffer who was found dead on his office floor in 2001.
An autopsy found that Lori Bolterstein Klausutis, 28, had hit her head on a desk after collapsing from an undiagnosed heart-valve irregularity but Trump called for a fresh investigation into the case.
The allegations earned Trump his first rebuke from Twitter, which would eventually kick him off the platform altogether in January 2021.
