An olive-branch summit at Mar-a-Lago between president-elect Donald Trump and the co-hosts of Morning Joe went over pretty much as you might expect at the Fox network.
Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC‘s flagship morning show began with a shock announcement that Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski–once friends of the incoming Republican president, and who in recent years become two of his most vicious critics–had sought a face-to-face meeting with Trump over the weekend.
“They said it was their first meeting with him in seven years and that while they disagree with him on a variety of topics, they agreed to reopen lines of communication,” Fox News’ Bill Melugin reported from Palm Beach after the news broke. “[They say] they don’t just want to talk about Donald Trump—they want to start talking to him again.”
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Melugin’s dispatch prompted fawning praise back at the Fox & Friends’ newsroom, with host Brian Kilmeade swinging in to describe Trump’s willingness to meet with his once-fiercest media adversaries as “probably the most magnanimous thing any individual in America has done in a long time.”
“They’ve called him every name under the sun,” co-host Ainsley Earhardt chimed in.
“For three years they called him fascist, Hitler,” Kilmeade added. “Every day, on every panel, there was nobody even to say… ever since Harold Ford left that building, there was not one person saying anything nice about Trump. And for him to take that as breakfast?”
“It just shows you that he does want to smooth things over,” Earhardt added. “Maybe he is going to unite our country.”
Scarborough previously claimed Trump’s team had threatened to arrest Morning Joe’s producers over the program’s bitter criticism of the now president-elect in recent years.
In the course of his campaign, an investigation by NPR also found the incoming Republican president made more than 100 threats to prosecute, court martial, or otherwise punish his political enemies, with multiple reports suggesting the targets of his prospective retribution are already taking steps to bolster their legal security, even their personal safety.
That’s as he confirms reports of his willingness to implement a state of national emergency in order to carry out what his campaign had billed as the largest mass deportation program in U.S. history.
