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The cohosts of The View had a lot to say about Morning Joe stars Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski after they vehemently defended their decision to travel to Mar-a-Lago and meet with Donald Trump — whom they’d previously framed as a “fascist” — after he won the election.
On Thursday’s (December 5) show, cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin was the first to offer a very spirited defense of the duo for their decision: “I have really strong feelings about it, and I actually agree with Mika and Joe,” she explained, arguing that their job as journalists is “to talk to both the subject and people who support the subject.” She then noted that their former guest, legendary journalist Bob Woodward, spoke to Trump for hours himself. “I see it as a basic journalism sort of thing,” she continued, adding that in her capacity as a Pentagon spokesperson, she had to work with less-than-ideal subjects, too. “Dialogue is so important in fraught times… you absolutely have to have that conversation.”
“I think the problem that people are having with it is that there’s a certain feeling that they’re normalizing him, and he’s not normal. He’s not, he’s a very unusual case,” Joy Behar argued. “I have a personal thing about this because when George W. Bush was in the White House, I knew that if I had a beer with the guy, I would like him. I knew him, and so I didn’t want to have a beer with him, because I had things to say about George W. Bush that were critical. If I had sat down with the guy, I would feel maybe I can’t anymore.”
“You can sit down as a journalist with a subject without traveling to Mar-a-Lago and having a meeting off the record, having a meeting on background,” Sunny Hostin added. She went on to note the importance of the First Amendment’s freedom of the press and said that she believed the Morning Joe host’s decision was counter to that. “Any journalist has to be able to report the facts fairly, without fear of retribution, and also without fear of well, just without fear of retribution. And I think one of the criticisms that they are getting is that they traipsed over to Mar-a-Lago because of their fear of retribution and their fear of losing their ability to of access.”
Sara Haines, who does have experience as a journalist, offered her thoughts by saying, “I don’t know how people jump from zero to 60 on this. The second they went down there, every headline was, ‘They’re kissing the ring. They’re bending the knee.’ If you check in with yourself and say, ‘Could I go and have an interview and objectively not be moved because I had a beer with someone, but sit there because I can’t unhear what he said. I can’t unsee what he’s done. Can I sit there and talk to him?’ … In my experience in news, it has always been you do a lot of background because sometimes people won’t go on the record… I’ve been interviewed on background, and I’ve interviewed on background. That’s common. That’s not abnormal. It wouldn’t be something that Joe and Mika would send a producer down because they did have a relationship. So if you’re going to get interviews or talk to the administration, you do go down on whatever terms, background, not on the record. Go down to Mar-a-Lago.”
“I think the cynicism of it all is just silly,” Griffin added. “These are people who are honestly resistance heroes, and they do one thing and their entire audience is outraged. I think it’s, I just have a hard time with that.”
“I like Joe. I like Joe and Mika. They’re very nice people,” Behar responded. “But he was a Republican who encouraged Trump before he turned on him. Now he’s turning back again.”
Whoopi Goldberg closed it out with her own view on the matter: Essentially, live and let live. “I always feel, if people feel they need to do something, let them do what they need to do,” she said. “Do I think they should have gone? Does it matter?… I understand the blowback, but that is part of my problem because we can’t get anywhere because everything contains blowback.”
Hostin countered by saying that while the news duo had every right to do what they did, they may still pay a price: “In terms of the backlash, there are consequences to whatever action. And my only point is, when you see that 38 percent of your audience is saying, ‘Wow, that made me feel so uncomfortable, I’m going to turn the channel,’ I do think that requires a little bit of introspection.”
The View, Weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC