The Morning Joe crew kick-started their very own information cycle on Monday when co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealed that they’d booked a private sit-down interview with Donald Trump over the weekend. It was the duo’s first in-person assembly with the president-elect in seven years and the primary contact they’d had since Scarborough known as Trump following the attempt on his life in July.

“Joe and I spotted it’s time to do one thing completely different,” Brzezinski mentioned whereas explaining their resolution. “And that begins with not solely speaking about Donald Trump, but additionally speaking with him.”

However not everybody was thrilled by Morning Joe’s “completely different” method. Within the hours after their Monday broadcast, social media platforms like X, previously Twitter, have been flooded by journalists and MSNBC viewers expressing their profound disagreement with Scarborough and Brzezinski’s resolution to go to Trump in Mar-a-Lago.

In the meantime, CNN’s chief media analyst—and TVNewser founder Brian Stelter—dug up some fresh details for his Dependable Sources e-newsletter concerning the impetus for Morning Joe’s journey to Florida. In accordance with Stelter’s sources, the co-hosts have been troubled about the potential for being on the receiving finish of Trump’s oft-stated need for “retribution” in opposition to retailers vital of his previous and future administration.

Stelter additionally reviews that response throughout the community was combined as properly, with some sources suggesting that the assembly learn as “capitulation” to the president-elect and his crew. “Monday morning’s massive reveal led some media observers to suspect that the Morning Joe hosts thought they could be singled out for political prosecutions,” Stelter writes. “Different MSNBC personalities have additionally privately puzzled if they are going to be focused.”

Trump himself spoke with Fox News Digital concerning the assembly on Monday morning. “Many issues have been mentioned, and I very a lot appreciated the truth that they wished to have open communication,” he informed the outlet. “In some ways, it’s too unhealthy that it wasn’t finished way back.” 

Nonetheless, these optimistic sentiments didn’t cease critics on each side of the aisle from placing Scarborough and Brzezinski on blast. Megyn Kelly—who not too long ago had her own fence-mending reunion with Trump—described their assembly with Trump as an “absurd farce” on her podcast. Visitor Glenn Greenwald additionally had harsh words for the married couple, saying: “[They] don’t consider in something apart from their very own careers and their very own scores.”

Rankings have been a recurring theme of the criticism that rolled in on X from progressive Morning Joe viewers and commentators.