MSNBC’s Morning Joe made its way back to the air after the network replaced it with different programming on Monday, with co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski expressing their disappointment in the decision.
The network made the decision to pull its flagship program from its Monday schedule on Sunday evening, the day after former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated at a Pennsylvania rally. At the start of Tuesday’s episode, Scarborough said he and Brzezinski were not informed ahead of time that their show would be replaced with a breaking news feed.
“We were very surprised,” Scarborough said. “We were very disappointed, and if we had known that there wasn’t going to be the one news feed from NBC News across all NBC News channels, Willie, we obviously would have been in yesterday morning.”
Shortly after, Brzezinski attempted to move on to discuss the topics, though Scarborough quickly interjected that the next time MSNBC informs them a news feed is replacing their show, the two of them would be "in our chairs." Brzezinski then laughed, adding, "We'll be sitting here."
"And the newsfeed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show," Scarborough said, implying the two would quit if a similar action by the network occurred again.
In discussing the events of Trump’s rally shooting , Scarborough questioned how the Secret Service allowed the shooter to get a chance to kill the former president, wondering why there was no additional security on the rooftop where the shooter was. He then played the footage of Trump getting back up and raising his fist after the gunshots and asked why the Secret Service allowed Trump to be exposed to additional gunfire when he raised his fist to the crowd.
Despite his criticism of the Secret Service, Scarborough did praise the service members who killed Trump’s failed assassin, claiming they stopped “an untold amount of violence.”
“You're looking for heroes? There aren't a lot there,” Scarborough said. “Those guys were the heroes that stopped the killing of a president, that stopped political violence, the likes of which we haven't seen in a really long time."
Later in the show, the Rev. Al Sharpton made an appearance on the show, during which he detailed how he called New York Mayor Eric Adams to call on people to pray for Trump’s wellbeing and that of the shooting’s victims. Sharpton is also a survivor of an assassination attempt that occurred in 1991, and he argued, “We must have boundaries in our political discourse.”
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An MSNBC spokesperson has denied a report that Morning Joe was pulled in response to Trump’s assassination attempt, specifically over concerns that either of the anchors could make an inappropriate comment on the historic event. Both anchors have been major critics of Trump in the past.
By mid-morning Monday, the network left its breaking news feed and resumed programming with its usual hosts, such as Andrea Mitchell, Jose Diaz-Balart, and Chris Jansing, while remaining in breaking news coverage.
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