MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire is moving on from his 5 a.m. Way Too Early hosting gig to co-host Morning Joe with fellow co-anchors Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Willie Geist.
Lemire’s new role is a promotion, and he will anchor the 9 a.m. slot as a key time for the show’s West Coast audience when he takes over in January, Axios reported.
Lemire, 44, has so far not addressed the news of his promotion. However, NBC News sources told Axios that Lemire signed the deal without taking a pay cut as the Morning Joe franchise stretches to 25 hours of live programming each week.
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Who Is Jonathan Lemire?
A Massachusetts native and Columbia University graduate, Lemire currently serves as Politico’s White House correspondent. He started his career as an intern then staff reporter at the New York Daily News, before moving on to politically-focused roles at the Associated Press and becoming an analyst at MSNBC, covering former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden’s administrations.
Following reports from U.S. intelligence agencies that Trump’s 2016 presidential win was influenced by Russian interference, Lemire was the reporter who famously asked Trump at the 2018 Russia–United States: “Who do you believe, Putin or U.S. intelligence?”
“[Vladimir Putin] just said it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be,” answered Trump to the shock of many media pundits. The moment further exposed Trump’s coziness with Putin, and Lemire continued to be a sharp analyst of Trump’s exploitation of disinformation.
He tangled with Trump again during a 2016 meeting with small business owners in West Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump kicked Lemire out of the meeting and called him a “sleazebag” for asking about sexual assault allegations against him.
“Mr. Trump, can you deny, have you ever touched—” Lemire began his question before he was met with boos and cries from attendees to “get out of here!”
Lemire said later Trump called him the “most boring man on television.”
Digging Into Trump’s Big Lie
In his 2022 book, The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020, Lemire reported that Trump began to set up election denialism and disinformation about the election being “rigged” in his 2016 presidential race against Hillary Clinton.
According to Lemire, that strategy culminated with the January 6 insurrection after Trump denied, and still does, losing the 2020 presidential race against Biden. And Lemire has pointed out in several Morning Joe appearances that Trump has begun to employ that same strategy for this election cycle.
Trump Tried to Get Him a Date
Lemire shared during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers that one of his earliest dealings with Trump was in 2001 when then-real estate mogul tried to set him up with another reporter simply because they were both red heads. Lemire was an intern at the Daily News at the time.
“[Trump] looked at me, he looked next to me, he pointed at me and he pointed to the young female reporter next to me and was like, ‘Hey, are you two together?’” recounted Lemire.
After telling the future president that they weren’t dating and did not know each other, he reportedly responded: “Well, you both have red hair so I just assumed you guys were together.”
Trump reportedly then circled back to Lemire after talking to several members of the press and asked, “You guys, really, you aren’t together? Well, would you want to be? I can make that happen.”
More ‘Morning Joe’ Shakeups
When news broke in 2022 that MSNBC was extending Morning Joe by an hour, the decision reportedly prompted questions about how the show planned to fill the 9 a.m. time slot.
But with the expanded programming performing well for the show’s West Coast demographic, Lemire has been tapped to continue that success.
According to Axios, a replacement host for Way Too Early will be announced later.
