Morning Joe Hosts to ‘Restart Communications’ with Donald Trump After Revealing They Visited the President-Elect

Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski say they’re ready to “restart communications” with President-elect Donald Trump — despite their combative past.

On the Monday, Nov. 18th episode of the MSNBC show, the pair spoke about how they were concerned about a number of Trump’s cabinet selections and had previously said that they would like to speak with the president-elect about his picks. According to Brzezinski, 57, they got the chance to do just that — talk with him when they traveled to Mar-a-Lago on Friday, marking the first time the pair have seen Trump, 78, in seven years.

“We talked about a lot of issues including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets,” Scarborough, 61, said, noting, “We didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues and we told him so.”

“What we did agree on was to restart communications,” Brzezinski chimed in.

She added, “For those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times… I guess I would ask back, ‘Why wouldn’t we?’ ”

Acknowledging the current political divisions between Democrats and Republicans, Brzezinski added that she and her co-host and spouse “realized it’s time to do something different and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but talking with him.”

“Don’t be mistaken. We are not here to defend or normalize Donald Trump,” Scarborough added. “We are here to report on him [and offer perspective during] these deeply unsettling times.”

The Morning Joe hosts and Trump have had their own fraught history together. Over the past several years, the president-elect often criticized them on social media after they “turned on him” politically, as he once wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

In May 2020, Trump even accused Scarborough of being a murderer — implying on X that the former member of the House of Representatives in Florida was to blame for the 2001 accidental death of one of his congressional aides, Lori Klausutis. This prompted the news host to pause his live show and ask Trump to stop watching “for the sake of America” and himself.

“When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so,” Trump wrote on social media. “Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!”

Scarborough responded in real time, after a Morning Joe staffer alerted him to the post. “Why don’t you turn off the television, and why don’t you start working, okay?” he said at the time, addressing the then-president. “You do your job, we’ll do ours, and America will be much better off for that. Just go. Turn off the TV, Donald.”

“You need to stop watching our show, okay? It’s not good for you,” Scarborough continued, adding, “I think that might be why you go out and, like — you’re distracted. You’re tweeting so much.”

According to The Associated Press, a coroner’s report showed Klausutis had an undiagnosed heart condition and died after passing out and hitting her head while at the office in Florida. Scarborough was in Washington, D.C. at the time of the incident.

Prior to Trump’s murder accusation, the then-president shared social media posts about Brzezinski’s appearance and called her spouse “Psycho Joe.”

“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore),” Trump wrote in 2017. “Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me.”

He added of Brzezinski, “She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”

Trump’s posts came shortly after Scarborough and Brezinski spent part of a recent show mocking the politician for hanging fake TIME covers of himself in his golf clubs, his “teensie” hands and for “lying every day and destroying the country.”

Soon after, the pair went on TV and addressed Trump’s comments. “Unfortunately, we’ve learned what we’ve always learned. He for some reason takes things very personally with women. He’s so much worse with women,” Scarborough said during a June 2017 broadcast. “He attacks women.”

“I’m fine. My family brought me up really tough,” added Brzezinski, who is the daughter of renowned diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served two presidents.

“He has a fixation. Its does worry me about the country. He appears to have a fragile, impetuous, childlike ego that he can’t take it,” she continued. “It is unbelievably alarming that this president is so easily played. He is so easily played by a cable news host.“