MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was seriously not happy with the way Morning Joe was taken off the air Monday, delivering a scathing on-air screed against the network’s handling of the episode and even threatening to quit if it happened again.
The popular political roundtable show did not air Monday, with a post on the Morning Joe X account explaining that the network would instead be showing continued coverage of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. The decision to sideline one of the network’s leading news shows at a time of such historic importance came as a surprise to some—apparently including Scarborough.
“Before we start this hour, Willie, I just wanted to briefly talk to our friends and viewers that watch us every day and talk about what happened yesterday,” Scarborough said at the top of the show’s second hour Tuesday, appearing on screen with co-hosts Willie Geist and Mika Brzezinski.
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“We were told in no uncertain terms on Sunday evening that there was going to be one news feed across all NBC news channels yesterday,” Scarborough continued, saying his understanding was there would be “one news feed across all NBC news channels, that we were going to stay—as a network—in breaking news mode throughout all day yesterday.”
“That did not happen,” he said. “We don’t know why that didn’t happen. Our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn’t happen—but it didn’t happen. We were also told it was going to happen throughout the day, and I guess, after there was such a strong blowback about yesterday morning, I guess they changed their plans.”
The host said that the Morning Joe team had “talked about it off the air.” “We’ll talk about it on the air, because we talk about everything on the air. We were very surprised. We were very disappointed.”
Scarborough said the crew would “obviously” have been in Monday morning had they known “there wasn’t going to be the one news feed.” Geist said he’d even been “suited up and ready to go for yesterday morning on a big morning,” adding he wished “we’d been here yesterday.”
Brzezinski seemed similarly perplexed by the show being off-air Monday, calling Morning Joe “the place where you can go to have the hard conversations in a civil way.” “And so it seemed like now more than ever, is a day, a time, that we would like to be on,” she said, referring to Monday.
As Brzezinski started to move the show on to a new topic, Scarborough interrupted with one last thought. “Let me just say: Next time we’re told there’s going to be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs,” he said. “Yeah. And the news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show.”
On Monday, an MSNBC spokesperson denied a report from CNN claiming that Morning Joe was taken off the air in the wake of the attempt on Trump’s life to avoid, in CNN’s words, “a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole.”
“Given the gravity and complexity of this unfolding story, NBC News, NBC News NOW and MSNBC have remained in rolling breaking news coverage since Saturday evening,” the MSNBC spokesperson told The Daily Beast in a statement. “As we continue to cover this story into the week, the networks will continue to cross simulcast, alternating between NBC News, NBC News NOW and ‘MSNBC Reports,’ so there is one news feed covering this developing situation.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the network for comment on Tuesday’s on-air remarks.
