Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley launched a scathing critique of MSNBC’s Morning Joe hosts on Monday, suggesting their recent meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago was driven by declining viewership rather than genuine reconciliation efforts.
During a conversation with radio personality Charlamagne tha God on her SiriusXM show, Nikki Haley Live, the former U.N. ambassador didn’t mince words about Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s surprise visit to Trump’s estate in Florida.
“Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough tore me up when I said anything about voting for Donald Trump or what I agreed with him on, even though I criticized him when I thought he was wrong. I praised him when I thought he was good. They tore me up,” Haley said during the broadcast. “But the truth is, it’s not that they suddenly saw the light. It’s that they saw the ratings.”
Newsweek contacted Morning Joe and the Trump-Vance transition team via email on Monday for comment.
The Mar-a-Lago meeting on November 15 marked the hosts’ first face-to-face encounter with Trump in seven years, though Scarborough had called Trump following the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. Brzezinski described Trump as cheerful and open to bipartisan cooperation.
Scarborough, who served as a Republican congressional representative for Florida’s 1st District from 1994 to 2001, publicly separated himself from the GOP during Trump’s presidency, registering as an independent in 2017. His criticism of Trump has been particularly pointed, including recent comparisons of Trump’s rhetoric to that of Nazi Germany dictator Adolf Hitler, specifically regarding Trump’s controversial statements about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country.”
During Monday’s Morning Joe broadcast, Scarborough acknowledged the meeting’s contentious nature, revealing that they discussed several hot-button issues, including abortion, mass deportation and Trump’s threats of political retribution against opponents and media outlets. “We didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of issues and we told him so,” Scarborough said on air.
Brzezinski, addressing viewer concerns about their decision to meet with Trump, framed the visit as an attempt to restart dialogue. “Five years of political warfare has deeply divided Washington and the country,” she said on air, adding that for a significant portion of the electorate, concerns about election denialism and January 6 were superseded by other issues that drove their support for Trump.
Charlamagne tha God, responding to Haley’s criticism, expanded on the broader media landscape and growing monetization of political communication. “It’s a ratings and revenue game,” he agreed, before advocating for more direct engagement across political divides.
“How about go talk to Joe Rogan? How about going to talk to Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, whoever it is. How about, go on Fox News,” Charlamagne said. “When I think about President Obama, that’s what President Obama used to do. He would go on Fox News and sit down and talk to Bill O’Reilly.”
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