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MSNBC star Rachel Maddow is angry with Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski for meeting incoming President Donald Trump, a well-placed source has told The U.S. Sun.
The pair surprised their network colleagues after asking for an invitation to Mar-a-Lago as part of a bridge-building exercise following criticism of Trump.
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WIDESPREAD ANGER
According to a CNN report, the pair decided to contact Trump out of fear of “retribution against his perceived political opponents.”
It said the hosts were “credibly concerned” about possible “governmental and legal harassment” from the new Trump administration.
Yet Scarborough and Brzezinski’s decision to meet with Trump in Florida has angered many at the network, including big hitters like Maddow who led the election night coverage.
A journalist at MSNBC who has worked there for 15 years says the fallout has created a “very tense situation,” with some feeling they have been “stabbed in the back.”
“It was such a stupid thing to do,” the insider told The U.S. Sun. “They have bent the knee to ensure not being targeted by Trump and the whole MAGA world.”
FIGHTING BACK
MSNBC trumpets itself as a progressive media brand and is historically left-leaning.
While some MSNBC staffers fully understand it would have been shortsighted to reject the invitation to a behind-closed-doors meeting with the 47th President of the United States, others fear it shows signs of weakness.
Brezinski, who recently announced her decision to leave X to avoid being a target on the platform now owned by Elon Musk, a newly close ally of Trump, expressed her disagreement.
“Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different,” she said.
“And that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him. The way I look at it is people are really scared, that’s one of the reasons we went in there.”
Following his comprehensive election victory on Nov 5, MSNBC has warned people of Trump’s leadership style.
Host Katie Phang posted on social media that “normalizing Trump is a bad idea,” and many of her colleagues agreed.
“There has been a massive change of dynamic since the election, and the mindset is that the bad numbers won’t change, they won’t go back up, unless we do ‘soft journalism’ and not push too much to criticize Trump’s administration,” added the veteran MSNBC journalist.
‘BOWING TO AUTHORITY’
The CNN report claimed that MSNBC bosses had no problem with the Morning Joe host’s trip to West Palm Beach to meet with Trump.
But our source says some at the network are “sh****g their pants” at the prospect of bowing to authority.
They are worried, claimed the insider, of devaluing the MSNBC brand and what it stands for.
“Most of us don’t want to be part of that,” said the journalist who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Some are thinking about trying to join other media organizations where we can do our job with respect and values to bring truth to the table without being pressured by the people in power.”
“The meeting at Mar-a-Lago created a lot of tension in the teams, and many other stars host of the channel see both Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski as opportunistic and with very low self respect and forgetting their values of being journalists with independence and integrity.”
“They have lost a lot of credibility. Rachel Maddow is p****d at them as are other presenters like Chris Hayes and Eri Melber. They are so frustrated.”
An MSNBC spokeswoman claimed Maddow hasn’t said anything about the matter, on or off air. “Any insinuation otherwise is merely speculative,” she told The U.S. Sun.
It was recently revealed that Maddow, 51, will take a $5 million paycut from her $30 million salary.
Executives at MSNBC have watched as the network’s ratings have plummeted since Donald Trump’s presidential election victory on November 5.
One insider at the network told The Ankler that some employees have struggled to come to grips with Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat, describing the network as a “safe space for a liberal TV audience.”
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