Speaker 1: One of the questions that a lot of people are
Speaker 1: struggling with in America right now is how how did
Speaker 1: it happen that Donald Trump was re elected to the
Speaker 1: American presidency. There's a lot of answers to the question.
Speaker 1: There's some simple ones, some big ones. But one of
Speaker 1: the answers, and one of the causes is the absolute
Speaker 1: brokenness cynicism of America's corporate access media model. This is
Speaker 1: the warning now, in a normal time, silliness attached to
Speaker 1: journalism is completely harmless. Fatuousness and fecklessness are no big deal.
Speaker 1: Obviously at some level. If you're the anchor person making
Speaker 1: ten million dollars a year hosting four hours of morning television,
Speaker 1: you live in a rarefied space. You are on top
Speaker 1: of the pyramid. And what comes with that is a
Speaker 1: lot of people who flatter you. When you're on top,
Speaker 1: that flattery can have a disorienting effect. It can make
Speaker 1: you diluted and disoriented. Now, Mika Brazinski is not a
Speaker 1: bad person. Mika Brazinski is a television presenter. She's not
Speaker 1: a diplomat, she's not an elected official, she doesn't hold
Speaker 1: a position in the society. That's better More enlightened or
Speaker 1: wiser than anybody else. She is covering on a show
Speaker 1: which her husband incepted and founded, in which she became
Speaker 1: the co host many many years ago. And this show,
Speaker 1: which I've been on many times, was fresh and exciting
Speaker 1: and completely different, and people liked it, and the conversations
Speaker 1: that were had were utterly optive, positional to all of
Speaker 1: the crapola that John Stewart confronted on shows like Crossfire
Speaker 1: when he went on and put a finger in Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson's face and told him how bad he was for
Speaker 1: the country. Mourning Joe isn't bad for the country until
Speaker 1: it was. Morning Joe is one of the reasons Donald
Speaker 1: Trump sits in the White House full stop.
Speaker 2: It's indisputable.
Speaker 1: And the reason for that is is because the prime
Speaker 1: directive of the Mourning Joe Show is not to explain
Speaker 1: things to its audience. It's not to explicate the danger
Speaker 1: and to confront it. It's to hold a position no
Speaker 1: matter what, at all costs that is proximate to power.
Speaker 1: And Mika Brazinski talks about this in her podcast with
Speaker 1: Joanna Coles and Samantha of The Daily Beast.
Speaker 3: The freedom to have the debate and the requirement that
Speaker 3: it is civil was the key, and so my dad
Speaker 3: and mom would have often many ambassadors, senators, world leaders.
Speaker 3: We had Deng Choo ping, the leader of China to
Speaker 3: dinner at our house during the normalizations of relations with China.
Speaker 3: My father said, let's not do his date dinner at
Speaker 3: the White House. Let's do it at our farmhouse in McLean.
Speaker 3: And let me tell you something. There were so many
Speaker 3: disasters that night because we were all stressed out. But
Speaker 3: it went really well, except for the part where I
Speaker 3: spelled caviare on him and where we didn't close the
Speaker 3: flu of the fireplace and house Scott's like. We were
Speaker 3: all so nervous. But it was an incredibly memorable historic
Speaker 3: experience and it was the greatest example actually, I guess
Speaker 3: of what it means to talk.
Speaker 2: All of that is great.
Speaker 1: They're nice experiences, but it doesn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with what Mika Brazinski and Joe Scarborough were called to do,
Speaker 1: which is to tell the truth when telling the truth
Speaker 1: has consequences. Instead, what they did is flatter power and
Speaker 1: the ego of Joe Biden. Let's watch this clip. It's
Speaker 1: one of two. They tell you everything that's broken about
Speaker 1: the American news media. It's hypocrisy, it's abject dishonesty, and
Speaker 1: its utter, absolute sneering condescension. First, let's watch Joe lie
Speaker 1: to the country before telling the American people.
Speaker 4: You start your tape right now, because I'm about to
Speaker 4: tell you the truth, and FU if you can't handle
Speaker 4: the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually and a is
Speaker 4: the best Biden ever, not a close second. And I've
Speaker 4: known him for years. The Brazenskis have known him for
Speaker 4: fifty years. If it weren't the truth, I wouldn't say it.
Speaker 2: Next, let's watch Don Lemon and his pack.
Speaker 5: He also knows deep in his heart that Donald Trump
Speaker 5: couldn't find you crane on a map if you had
Speaker 5: the letter you and a picture of an actual physical
Speaker 5: crane next to it. He knows that this is, you know,
Speaker 5: an administration defined by ignorance of the world. And so
Speaker 5: that's partly him playing to their base and playing to
Speaker 5: their audience. You know, the credulous boomer rube demo that
Speaker 5: backs Donald Trump, that wants to think that that that
Speaker 5: Donald Trump's.
Speaker 2: A smart one in there. Y'all will lead us for them.
Speaker 6: You will lead us with your geography and your maps
Speaker 6: and your spelling, even though my math. You're reading, yeah,
Speaker 6: you're reading. You know your geography. Know in other countries
Speaker 6: lines on the map, only they me lad us know
Speaker 6: where Ukraine is.
Speaker 1: It's appalling, it's dishonest, and it's why we have Trump.
Speaker 1: We don't need to talk about it much. It's staring
Speaker 1: us in the face.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Mika Brazinski is an accomplished woman. There is no question
Speaker 1: about that. That comes from an accomplished family with accomplished siblings,
Speaker 1: married to an accomplished man, surrounded by accomplished people. But
Speaker 1: in order to understand what it is that I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about, you have to appreciate something that happens
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the podcast interview.
Speaker 7: So we joined now by our beast of the week,
Speaker 7: and you know her as the co host of Morning
Speaker 7: Joe on MSNBC, where her fresh political takes wake you
Speaker 7: up faster than that first cup of coffee. Mika Brazinski,
Speaker 7: Mika who is Anything but Meek, is a fierce advocate
Speaker 7: for women's empowerment, a best selling author, and the visionary
Speaker 7: behind the Know Your Value initiative.
Speaker 1: Is Mika Brazinski a visionary. Joanna Coles thinks so, But
Speaker 1: does that come from an objective observation or are you
Speaker 1: witnessing a transaction, a flattering of a powerful person powerful
Speaker 1: clique by another powerful person in a powerful clique that
Speaker 1: lived close to each other and practice something that they
Speaker 1: call that I don't recognize as journalists. Joanna Coles, for example,
Speaker 1: when she took over The Daily Beast in a strategy
Speaker 1: to reinvigorate, it suggested that The Daily Beast hire a
Speaker 1: full time correspondent to cover the fabulousness of Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: his fiance Lauren Sanchez. This matters because Jeff Bezos, the
Speaker 1: second richest guy in the world, was so scared shitless
Speaker 1: that he intervened into the Washington Post editorial process to
Speaker 1: precapitulate to Donald Trump in advance to protect his larger interests.
Speaker 1: The issue is very simple. There are only a couple
Speaker 1: of possibilities. It is either a the case that Joe
Speaker 1: Scarborough and Mika Brazinski called Donald Trump hitler and compared
Speaker 1: Maga to the Third Reich over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: because they're frauds who thought that inciting and dividing by
Speaker 1: comparing him to Hitler would be good for them, while
Speaker 1: not meaning it, not a word of it. If they
Speaker 1: did that, it has destroyed their credibility. Or alternatively, Mika
Speaker 1: and Joe believe that Donald Trump is Hitler, evaluated him
Speaker 1: as a fascist, and in the immediate aftermath of the election,
Speaker 1: instead of figuring out how to meet the moment having
Speaker 1: a philosophy of truth telling about how they will explain
Speaker 1: what is happening, contextualize it, bring guests on to help
Speaker 1: their audience comprehend it, what they did was fashion a
Speaker 1: capitulation campaign and went tomorrow a lago to meet with Trump,
Speaker 1: not to get insight, not to report. There's no discernible
Speaker 1: public benefit from the meeting whatsoever, in any form or
Speaker 1: fashion that anybody anywhere on the planet Earth can articulate.
Speaker 1: The purpose of the meeting was because Mika and Joe
Speaker 1: are afraid, which was reported by Dylan Buyers accurately, precisely,
Speaker 1: and devastatingly. Let's watch Mika say that the criticism of
Speaker 1: all of this is because we're afraid.
Speaker 3: I was trying to think through it, and I just
Speaker 3: think everyone is so scared. People, whether they're in the
Speaker 3: media or they are citizens of this great country. I
Speaker 3: think everybody is feeling scared, disoriented, fearful of the future.
Speaker 3: And I think I think, just for a quick moment,
Speaker 3: I might be like the punching bag for that, but
Speaker 3: I'd like to believe we're going to get through this.
Speaker 1: We are at the hour of death for corporate media
Speaker 1: because running a newsroom speaking out against Trump in this
Speaker 1: moment is something that's going to require stamina, guts, and fortitude.
Speaker 1: That's not what you get at morning Joel. Now, it's
Speaker 1: interesting to watch Mika Brazinski in this interview, and I
Speaker 1: say this to somebody who has prepared presidents, prime ministers,
Speaker 1: the greatest quarterbacks of all time, senators, congressmen, ambassadors, CEOs,
Speaker 1: you name it for all manner of interviews. Now, at
Speaker 1: the beginning of this, Mika says, I don't have much
Speaker 1: to say before going on an extended filibuster. That justifies
Speaker 1: the rationale for the capitulation.
Speaker 3: It's my job to interview and talk to people I
Speaker 3: disagree with, feel threatened by, or who have hurt my
Speaker 3: feelings in some way. So there's how I do it.
Speaker 3: I do my job. I mean, do I really not
Speaker 3: go in there? Because he tweeted about me bleeding badly
Speaker 3: from a facelift at mar A Lago. I don't know
Speaker 3: eight nine years ago. I mean, we haven't talked in
Speaker 3: seven years, and I will say that's a problem too.
Speaker 3: So I'm worried about myself and how I conduct myself
Speaker 3: in this media universe that we're in, taking stock of
Speaker 3: everything that has happened. I don't regret anything I've said
Speaker 3: during the campaign, and I stand by it, but I'm
Speaker 3: also looking at how to do things differently. And I
Speaker 3: would never turned down an opportunity to gain insider information never.
Speaker 3: So how I handle mean tweets or the personal stuff
Speaker 3: is that that's just not something I'm supposed to worry about.
Speaker 3: That's my job. If I let not get in the
Speaker 3: way of me doing my job. I don't think my
Speaker 3: viewers would appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Mika went on a show and was celebrated as being
Speaker 1: a journalist by people who call themselves journalists, not Samantha
Speaker 1: Bee but Joanna Calls.
Speaker 2: And they'd didn't.
Speaker 1: Talk about, for example, the Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hagsath,
Speaker 1: who's an accused rapist. Instead, they talked about the issue
Speaker 1: that matters to them, which is them not you. The
Speaker 1: justifications for the meeting fall flat because the meeting wasn't
Speaker 1: about insight. It was about as covering, which meant selling
Speaker 1: out an audience.
Speaker 2: It depends on those.
Speaker 1: Two people that they came to trust until it imploded,
Speaker 1: that they would tell them what was happening, and those
Speaker 1: two gave that away in this election cycle. And it's
Speaker 1: really sad and it's really pathetic to watch. But now
Speaker 1: that it happened, it has to be called out because
Speaker 1: pretending that that is the news in a moment when
Speaker 1: there's an information crisis and somebody is trying to obliterate
Speaker 1: the checks and balances, the people who control so much
Speaker 1: of the conversation space on morning television don't get an
Speaker 1: allowance to suddenly, now in their self interest, say now
Speaker 1: we all have to come together. Not when he's appointing
Speaker 1: Christy Nome to Homeland Security, Not when he's appointing a
Speaker 1: Katari registered agent to be Attorney General. After Pensacola, Prince
Speaker 1: Andrew flamed out. This moment Mika's right about is an
Speaker 1: urgent one. In Late Night eineteen nineties, a few years
Speaker 1: before nine to eleven, John Miller, now a CNN analyst,
Speaker 1: former New York City Deputy Police commissioner but then a
Speaker 1: journalist with ABC News traveled to the Hindu Kush in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan to interview Osama bin Lauden. He was living in
Speaker 1: a cave. He had declared war on the United States.
Speaker 1: That journey was long, it was risky, and it was dangerous.
Speaker 1: Osama bin Laden was an evil man, a killer, but
Speaker 1: he deserved an interview, and he deserved one before he
Speaker 1: got shot in the head by Navy seal team. If
Speaker 1: a journalist could have found him, it could have gotten
Speaker 1: to him. Good for them. That's not what happened in
Speaker 1: mare A Lago. It wasn't an interview. It wasn't about
Speaker 1: telling you what's going on. It was about vanity. In
Speaker 1: vanity and self interest is crippling the country and it
Speaker 1: made it possible for Donald Trump to take power, and
Speaker 1: in order to take it back from him, this era,
Speaker 1: a fatuousness of effecklessness where people will debase themselves and
Speaker 1: call it courage, must end.
Speaker 2: It must.
Speaker 1: The news business is vital in a democracy. If people
Speaker 1: cannot know, cannot tell what's real and what's not, what's
Speaker 1: dangerous and what's not because everything that they're exposed to
Speaker 1: is performative bullshittery, and no one means anything. We get
Speaker 1: to where we're at. The kaboom is the sound of
Speaker 1: the implosion of the connections between institutions and leaders and
Speaker 1: people and the American people regarding trust. Joe and Mika
Speaker 1: broke the trust and they know it, and the show
Speaker 1: won't make it. And that's too bad, because once upon
Speaker 1: a time it was fresh. It was good, It was invigorating,
Speaker 1: and it made politics understandable, explicable, brought people together, and
Speaker 1: it was good. Wasn't because and this is the truth,
Speaker 1: if you grow up in the sunlight where you sat
Speaker 1: at a table as a kid and you spilled caviar
Speaker 1: on Deang Shaoping, then the idea that you're not at
Speaker 1: the center of a world revolving around you is anethma
Speaker 1: and the worst thing that could happen. It's not that
Speaker 1: Hitler became president. It's that you didn't have a seated
Speaker 1: Hitler's table. And I think it's despicable. And I think
Speaker 1: the attack on the motives of critics who have pointed
Speaker 1: out the hypocrisy is absurd. I think the audience thinks
Speaker 1: it's absurd. I think the entire business model is absurd,
Speaker 1: and the tragedy of it is that the people with
Speaker 1: conviction and principal at NBC, like Rachel Maddow, like Nicole Wallace,
Speaker 1: all of them are degraded by the debasements that have
Speaker 1: been imposed on them by colleagues who have the gall
Speaker 1: to say they get it for us, which they most
Speaker 1: certainly did not.
Speaker 2: I'm Steve Schmidt.
Speaker 1: This is the warning and I invite you to join.
Speaker 1: Subscribe on our substack, on our YouTube channel, follow us.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the community.