President-elect Donald Trump has appeared to have broken two of his most high-profile critics, MSNBC “Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
The duo opened the show on Monday by revealing that they met with Trump face-to-face at the President’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida over the weekend.
“Joe and I realize it’s time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him,” Brzezinski said.
She also admitted their repeated criticism of Trump only strengthened the resolve of his supporters.
“We did agree on was to restart communications,” she said.
For his part, Trump put an upbeat spin on the meeting during a conversation with Fox News Digital.
“Many things were discussed, and I very much appreciated the fact that they wanted to have open communication,” said Trump, the outlet reported. “In many ways, it’s too bad that it wasn’t done long ago.”
The New York Post has the rest of the story:
MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-hosts and vicious Donald Trump critics Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealed Monday they had a “personal” sit-down with the president-elect in Florida to “restart communications” — after conceding that voters overwhelmingly made their choice.
Scarborough and Brzezinski, who have repeatedly bashed the president-elect on air over the years, said they had a face-to-face with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Friday — their first meeting in seven years — after reaching out in the wake of his election win.
“Five years of political warfare has deeply divided Washington and the country. We have been as clear as we know how in expressing our deep concerns about President Trump’s actions and words in the coarsening of public debate,” said Brzezinski, 57, as she opened Monday’s show with the stunning revelation.
“But for nearly 80 million Americans, election denialism, public trials, January 6th were not as important as the issues that moved them to send Donald Trump back to the White House with their vote.”
“Joe and I realize it’s time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him,” she added.
Scarborough, 61, said the trio talked about issues including “abortion, mass deportation and threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets.”
“We talked about that a good bit,” he said.
“It will come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show, has watched it over the past year or over the past decade, that we didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of issues and we told him so.”
Brzezinski then added, “What we did agree on was to restart communications.”
She went on to acknowledge that Trump “was cheerful and upbeat” during the private meeting — and that “he seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues.”
Trump, 78, told Fox News Digital in an interview published Monday that the meeting was “extremely cordial” and the couple praised his “flawless” 2024 campaign.
“Many things were discussed, and I very much appreciated the fact that they wanted to have open communication,” the soon-to-be 47th president said. “In many ways, it’s too bad that it wasn’t done long ago.”
They “congratulated me on running a ‘great and flawless campaign, one for the history books,’ which I really believe it was, but it was also a campaign where I worked long and hard — perhaps longer and harder than any presidential candidate in history,” he added.
While he feels “an obligation to the American public, and to our country itself, to be open and available to the press,” Trump also said: “If not treated fairly, however, that will end.”