MSNBC's marquee daytime program "Morning Joe" is expected to close out the year with diminished viewership.
The audience of the long-running show hosted by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski is down 35% among total viewers, averaging just 720,000, and down 37% among viewers in the advertiser-coveted demographic ages 25-54, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Viewership took an additional dip after Scarborough and Brzezinski revealed their Mar-a-Lago meeting with President-elect Donald Trump last month, down 17% among total viewers and more than a third of viewers in the key demo since the Nov. 18 broadcast.
MSNBC'S JOE SCARBOROUGH UNLEASHES ON MEDIA STILL OUTRAGED OVER TRUMP MEETING: 'GROW UP!'
Their meeting was the first time the co-hosts had seen Trump in seven years, Brzezinski said, and Scarborough added that they didn't see "eye to eye on a lot of issues, and we told him so."
Scarborough said they went over such topics as abortion, mass deportation and threats of retribution against political opponents and media outlets. The meeting, according to the hosts, was about an agreement to "restart communications."
"For those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back — why wouldn’t we?" Brzezinski said. "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."
LIBERALS RAGE AGAINST 'MORNING JOE' 'BETRAYAL' AFTER CO-HOSTS MEET WITH TRUMP: 'WE WILL NOT FORGIVE'
The disclosure by the MSNBC stars ignited a firestorm from their liberal viewers, many of them vowing to boycott the show. Even their own colleague, MSNBC contributor Jennifer Rubin, fueled the movement and trashed the co-hosts.
Scarborough and Brzezinski remained defiant, defending the Trump meeting last week after one of their frequent guests, The Atlantic's David Frum, suggested they were living in "fear" with Trump returning to the White House.
CLICK HERE FOR THE LATEST MEDIA AND POLITICS NEWS
"Let me tell you something, you can talk to anybody that's worked in the front office of NBC and MSNBC over the past 22 years tell you I'm not fearful. You talk to anybody who served with me in Congress, they will tell you- not fearful of leadership. Now? Not fearful," Scarborough said.
"We went down to talk to the president-elect, and people wrote articles that were just false. But you know what we did? We did the corporate thing. Corporate said, 'Don't say anything. Just keep your head down.' … We did that. We enjoyed our Thanksgiving. We're like, ‘Eh, you know what? People are upset with some of our guests, some of our friends. Maybe we snuck up on them too fast. Maybe we should have given them more of a warning. Whatever. It's fine.' But guess what? The main complaint was that we called Donald Trump's rhetoric ‘fascist’ during the campaign. And then we went down to have an off-the-record comment with. Guess who else does that? The New York Times. The Washington Post."
"You know what? I even think folks from The Atlantic, I think, might be doing that," Brzezinski interjected.
"If they have a chance to talk on the background with the incoming president and president-elect, they would do it," Scarborough continued. "In fact, as somebody wrote during this outrageously stupid, immature series of articles that lied time and time again about us, reporters said 'I'd be fired if I had the opportunity to go in and talk to somebody who's the incoming President of the United States and I didn't do it.' Ask any journalist at The New York Times and New York Post- and this is a funny thing. People at The Washington Post, especially, hair on fire! Media report, ‘how dare they, how dare they.’ At the same time that The Washington Post is doing the same thing, trying to speak to the president on background, trying to speak to people around the president on background. That's what reporters do!"
"The only difference between what we did on that visit and what The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, everybody else is doing is we were transparent. We actually told you," Scarborough later said. "And so I understand if you don't know how the media works, day in and day out, and you're just like watching this show day in and day out, I'd understand I would be like, ‘Wow, okay, man, man, that sudden.’ But for media reporters to lie, to pretend that this is a shock, to try to get [clicks], the Washington Post reporters and columnists saying ‘How dare they go see him after they said he was a fascist.’ And that's exactly what The Washington Post is doing. That's exactly what The Wall Street Journal is doing. That's exactly what The New York Times is doing. Yeah, you know what you call it? You call it their job."
