Joe Scarborough, the namesake host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, addressed the network’s decision to pull Monday’s show from the air an instead run an NBC News/NBC News Now newsfeed that covered the aftermath of the assassination attempt on the life of Donald Trump.
“We were told, in no uncertain terms on Sunday evening, that there was going to be one news feed across all NBC channels yesterday,” Scarborough said, adding that it meant that “we were going to stay in breaking news mode throughout all day yesterday. That did not happen. We don’t know why that didn’t happen. Our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn’t happen.”
MSNBC returned to its regular program lineup by the afternoon, with Nicolle Wallace hosting her show at 4 p.m. ET.
CNN’s Oliver Darcy, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported that the MSNBC decision was made out of concern a guest “might make an inappropriate comment” that would create a larger backlash against the show and network in the aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt. But an MSNBC spokesperson denied that characterization, noting that the network has been in breaking news coverage ever since the Trump rally shooting.
But there also was criticism on social media for the network’s decision. The preemption was announced on Sunday night with the promise that the show would return on Tuesday.
Scarborough, appearing with co-host Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist, said that they were told that the breaking news mode “was going to happen throughout the day. I guess, after there was such a strong blowback about yesterday morning, that they changed their plans. And so those plans changed as well.”
He added, “We were very surprised. We were very disappointed, and if we had known that there wasn’t going to be the one news feed across all NBC News channels … we obviously would have been in yesterday morning.”
Scarborough said that “next time we’re told there’s going to be a news feed replacing us, we will be sitting in our chair. The news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show.”
The network has not yet commented on Scarborough’s remarks.
Scarborough’s upset over the preemption was an unusual but not unprecedented public display of disagreement with network decisions. Back in March, Scarborough and Brzezinski were among the MSNBC personalities to sharply publicly criticize NBC News over its decision to hire former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as a network analyst, given her role in Trump’s challenge of the 2020 election results on the false claims that it was stolen from him.
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