MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough says that he was “surprised” and “disappointed” after NBC leadership pulled his show Monday in favor of rolling breaking news coverage about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
‘We’ve talked about it off the air, we’ll talk about it on the air, because we talk about everything on the air,” he said.
Scarborough, joined by co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist, opened the show by expressing some clear frustrations with what happened.
“We were told in no uncertain terms on Sunday evening that there was going to be one news feed across all NBC news channels yesterday… that was going to be one news feed across all NBC news channels, that we were going to stay as a network in breaking news mode throughout all day yesterday, that did not happen,” Scarborough said. “We don’t know why that was that didn’t happen, our team, was not given a good answer as to why that didn’t happen. But it didn’t happen.”
The MSNBC host suggested that the reaction to the decision to preempt Morning Joe may have caused NBC leadership to change their plans.
“We were also told it was going to happen throughout the day, and I guess, after there was such a strong blowback about yesterday morning, I guess they changed their plans,” he said. “We were very surprised, we were very disappointed.”
Brzezinski and Geist expressed similar frustrations, with Geist noting that he led NBC’s coverage of the aftermath on Sunday morning, where he co-hosted with Savannah Guthrie.
Geist said that he was “obviously suited up and ready to go for yesterday morning on a big morning, and were told that something else was going to be broadcast,” Geist said. “So we are here today, going through a lot, catching up a little bit, but we want to be here for our audience, and we know you trust us, and we have ultimate respect for you guys. So we are here today. I wish we’d been here yesterday.”
Morning Joe is about “being the place where you can go to have the hard conversations in a civil way,” Brzezinski added. “And so it seemed like now more than ever, is a day, a time, that we would like to be on. And I think our viewers agree with that.”
CNN first reported the decision to preempt Morning Joe, writing that “the decision was made to avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole.”
