Have the liberal co-hosts been treating their cushy media gig “like a hobby rather than a job”?
Joe Scarborough, the former Florida Republican congressman who mainly bashes Republicans for a living on television, may have forgotten to set his alarm lately — at least until far-left MSNBC was spun off into an entity called MS NOW.
According to a recent analysis by the Washington Free Beacon, Scarborough and his Morning Joe co-host/wife Mika Brzezinski have been “chronically absent from their own show in recent months.”
The nonappearances on the weekday, 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., Eastern time, political talkfest could be understandable to some degree because the perpetual OrangeMan Bad obsession must be monotonous and merely performative at this point.
It would seem, though, that an important part of being the resistance is showing up for the job instead of being truant.
In any case, the Free Beacon’s investigation set forth below suggests that Morning Joe/Mika won’t be winning any attendance awards or merit badges this year in connection with a program that principally aired from NBC’s New York City studios starting in 2007.
“Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have been chronically absent from their own show in recent months, with a remarkably high volume of days off. Morning Joe, which may be the most important show at the network formerly known as MSNBC, was without at least one of its married cohosts for literally dozens of episodes. But after MSNBC’s forced rebranding to MS NOW, the couple suddenly began boasting perfect attendance…
“Between May 27 and Nov. 15, Scarborough and Brzezinski appeared together on just 70 of 124 episodes…Scarborough missed 29 shows, while Brzezinski skipped 41—or 1 out of every 3 workdays. In July, she was out for two consecutive weeks, appearing on only about half of that month’s episodes. Neither was present for 16 shows, leaving Morning Joe‘s C-list—Jonathan Lemire, Willie Geist, and Katty Kay—to fill in…
“Scarborough and Brzezinski primarily broadcast from a studio built at their home in exclusive Jupiter, Fla. As the show is live at 6 a.m., it has raised some questions during the many absences about whether one spouse is just sleeping in while the other hosts the program…”
On Twitter/X, the Beacon similarly noted that “It turns out Morning Joe hasn’t had much Joe at all over the past several months, as host Joe Scarborough and cohost slash wife Mika Brzezinski treated their flagship program like a hobby rather than a job, racking up a remarkable number of absences…Scarborough and Brzezinski… are paid millions of dollars to host a show from a specially built home studio in Florida:”
Images of Washington, D.C., such as the White House, often appear behind Morning Joe/Mika when on the air. That’s presumably just to create the perception for the viewers that Scarborough, et. al, are “reporting” from the country’s seat of political power.
Residing on a network whose rebranded acronym stands for “My Source for News, Opinion, and the World,” the ratings-challenged Morning Joe show seldom actually makes news except for occasional viral video clip in which Scarborough uncharacteristically criticizes a Democrat or Democrat policies.
Parenthetically, in both the private and public sector, return-to-office requirements are underway.
Even before COVID, however, many conscientious Americans, however, worked — or now continue to work — productively and efficiently on a remote basis either full or part time (and thereby avoiding distractions form often tedious office drama).
But the key word is work.
If the Beacon’s reporting is accurate, Joe and Mika apparently frequently didn’t even manage to make the commute from their living room or kitchen to their home studio.
Elected or appointed Democrats don’t necessarily have an impressive reputation for a work ethic, so perhaps this is why the duo has such an affinity for them.
“Scarborough and Brzezinski’s attendance suddenly turned around starting Nov. 12, just days before MSNBC was forced to switch its name to MS NOW due to Comcast offloading the flailing network onto a spinoff company, Versant, and then deciding, belatedly, to strip MSNBC of the ‘NBC’,” the Beacon added in the published article that was headlined ‘Morning Joe or Just Morning?…”
Making matters worse for MS NOW, the Beacon claimed, “the couple’s chronic absenteeism has reportedly frustrated long-suffering staffers, leading to ‘chaos’ and ‘a workplace in meltdown’…’Every day is a scramble. Who’s hosting? What’s the tone? Who’s running the ship? No one knows,'” a producer lamented.
You may recall that Morning Joe regularly gave Donald Trump a megaphone when the former New York City real estate mogul and reality show star initially entered presidential politics in 2015. They obviously had a major falling out since then, with harsh rhetoric on both sides.
The couple, however, met with the-then president elect on November 15, 2024, at Mar-a-Lago, in an attempt to restart communications, and according to Grokipedia, “the encounter drew immediate backlash from progressive audiences and MSNBC viewers, who accused the hosts of hypocrisy given their prior characterizations of Trump as a threat to democracy…”
Aside from, or perhaps including, the Mar-a-Lago meetup, since much of what goes on in politics or media is transactional or conditional, Joe Scarborough is hardly the only high-profile person who is making money or has made money in the media by opportunistically going mostly from right to left.
It’s possible, for example, that U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene might wind up on MS NOW or CNN, or on some other platform, in a potential anti-MAGA role, after she steps down from Congress in January.
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