Morning Joe on Tuesday descended into bitter infighting over Donald Trump’s pardoning of the January 6 rioters.
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski quickly turned on marketing expert Donny Deutsch for claiming non-MAGA Americans supported the dramatic move.
Deutsch also argued the president’s thumping election win in November meant he has ‘co-opted America’s heartbeat’.
Angry Brzezinski confronted him, leading the show to spiral into a heated argument, as the married hosts firmly asserted that Trump is continuously disregarding established norms.
The couple had repeatedly slammed the president on air since he first ran for office in 2016, branding him a danger to democracy.
However, critics, particularly liberals, criticized them for visiting Mar-a-Lago for a friendly encounter with Trump post-election, causing their reporting to become more lenient in the preceding weeks.
The truce seemed to dissolve on Tuesday following Trump’s induction and his implementation of several executive orders, notably the pardons issued on January 6th.
On the ‘Way Too Early’ segment host Ali Vitali brought up the pardons and Trump making good on his word, telling viewers: ‘Support him or not… this is how it is now.’
Scarborough quickly interjected to claim the election had been close – ‘1.5 percent’, he said.
Deutsch jumped in, saying: ‘I just want to add one thing to that. We can say that to ourselves, [but Trump] has co-opted America’s heartbeat.’
The claim – made in reference to Trump’s executive order pardoning some 1,500 January 6 defendants – left Brzezinski visibly furious.
She said: ‘Well, if America’s heartbeat is to have hostage families standing behind him, that marketing visual is quite something.’
Her remark appeared to reference Trump’s standing with Israeli relatives of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza at a post-inauguration rally in Washington Monday.
Deutsch said ‘I’m not saying you might not like that. Listen to me…’ before she interrupted to say ‘I’m talking about [January 6]’.
Deutsch continued: ‘People will absorb it because he gives them what they want in other places.’
Shouting at this point, he added he wanted ‘Democrats to learn that you can even get away with things as ridiculous as that if you’re feeding people what they want to hear.’
‘Yeah,’ Brzezinski agreed, at this point accepting the former MSNBC anchor’s olive branch.
But her husband Scarborough did not seem so willing. Speaking of Trump’s promises to pardon those who participated in the rioting, he said: ‘Well, he actually told them.
‘Told them again. He told them what he was going to do.’ ‘He did,’ Brzezinski at this point noted in agreement.
Scarborough, condescendingly speaking from the perspective of conservatives, went on: ‘And he’s providing the bread and the circuses as they said in Roman days.
He said: ‘That entertains them. But underneath that, there are are things that he’s doing breaking one norm after another.’ Brzezinski added: ‘You can’t ignore.’
Deutsch hit back: ‘Nobody’s saying ignore it, I’m saying the opposite, actually.’ Scarborough added: ‘After promising that he was going to break every norm.’
In addition to pardoning January 6 pardons in front of TV cameras, Trump on Tuesday commuted the sentences of eight more.
Previously, he said ‘pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists’ was ‘chief on that list’ of priorities’ – a promise host Vitali pointed out was made ‘with the stroke of a pen’.
Last month the new bosses of the media firm that oversees MSNBC started making it clear they want more Republican voices on the left-wing network.
It came weeks after the CEO is said to have slashed Rachel Maddow’s pay by some $5million, after she agreed to stay with the network for another five years.
