Rachel Maddow sparks internal conflict at MSNBC by criticizing Morning Joe hosts for showing allegiance to Trump

Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC anchor, is said to be very upset with her Morning Joe co-workers for holding a meeting with Donald Trump right after he won the presidential election.

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski went to see the president-elect just over two weeks ago at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Their aim was to ‘restart communications’ and establish a ‘new approach’ for his upcoming second term.

According to a report in The US Sun, Maddow and other hosts on the struggling liberal network are criticizing the actions of the married Morning Joe hosts as ‘opportunistic.’

‘The meeting at Mar-a-Lago created a lot of tension in the teams, and many other stars…see both Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski as opportunistic and with very low self respect and forgetting their values of being journalists with independence and integrity,’ said a journalist who’s worked at MSNBC for 15 years.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the journalist made it clear who has a problem with Morning Joe pivoting from calling Trump a fascist and an admirer of Adolf Hitler to having a cordial meeting with him to figure out coverage going forward.

‘They have lost a lot of credibility. Rachel Maddow is pissed at them as are other presenters like Chris Hayes and Ari Melber. They are so frustrated,’ the journalist said.

‘It was such a stupid thing to do,’ they added. ‘They have bent the knee to ensure not being targeted by Trump and the whole MAGA world.’ 

This comes as MSNBC has devolved into utter turmoil following Trump’s win. The network’s viewership has taken a precipitous dive, Comcast is considering spinning off the cable channel and Maddow agreed to a $5 million pay cut in her new contract.

According to Brzezinski, their rationale for reaching out to Trump was to soothe the fears of their viewers who are worried about his cabinet picks. 

At that point, Trump had already selected Fox News host Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health Secretary, and former Congressman Matt Gaetz to lead the Department of Justice – who later withdrew from the nomination process, paving the way for former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to take his place.

Scarborough said the three ‘talked about a lot of issues, including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets.’

Scarborough, who left the Republican party in 2017 because of its embrace of Trump, shared that they ‘didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues and we told him so.’

Insiders are reportedly worried that this will devalue the MSNBC’s reputation as a reliably anti-Trump network.

‘Most of us don’t want to be part of that,’ the journalist told the US Sun. ‘Some are thinking about trying to join other media organizations where we can do our job with respect and values to bring truth to the table without being pressured by the people in power.’ 

The backlash against the two hosts has been immense in the weeks since the controversial meeting, with people on both sides of the aisle ripping them.

The View’s Ana Navarro slammed the pair, accusing them of ‘changing their stripes’ because of ‘who’s in power’ and calling the meeting ‘opportunistic’.

On the MAGA side, Megyn Kelly had a much sterner reaction and said on her show: ‘I searched for a way to respond appropriately, and I called on my 10 years as a litigator, in addition to my now 20 as a journalist, and I think I found the perfect phrase: Go f*** yourselves.’

‘Go f*** yourselves. Go f*** yourselves you dishonest jokes of faux journalists. What an absurd farce… Which one was insincere? He’s Hitler? Or now we’re going to speak truth to power and find a way of speaking to and working with Donald Trump? Which one was a lie?’

Scarborough and Brzezinski initially dismissed the criticism, saying how it showed there is a ‘massive disconnect’ between ‘social media and the real world.’

Still, Morning Joe suffered a huge dip in ratings after the Trump meeting.

There are also rumblings the pair got together with Trump for more nefarious reasons.

An anonymous source told Puck News that they were afraid the incoming president would have allowed Gaetz as attorney general to investigate conspiracy theories surrounding the 2001 death of Scarborough’s intern while he was a GOP congressman in Florida.

An autopsy found that Lori Bolterstein Klausutis, 28, had hit her head on a desk after collapsing from an undiagnosed heart-valve irregularity but Trump called for a fresh investigation into the case.

Sources told CNN that since Trump has been feuding with the Morning Joe hosts for years, they met with him to hopefully tamp down his rhetoric against them.

Despite striking up a warm media relationship when Trump ran for president the first time in 2016, Brzezinski and Scarborough had a falling out with him after he shocked the world and beat failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Scarborough and Brzezinski were soon highly critical of Trump’s presidency, after he entered the White House, repeatedly condemning him on their morning news program.

Brzezinski in particular repeatedly needled Trump for being ‘mentally ill’ and speculated about his need to see a psychiatrist.

In June 2017, Trump fired back at the pair on social media, recalling how ‘low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe,’ came to Mar-a-Lago for three nights in a row during New Year’s Eve, and were desperate to spend time with him.