Joe Scarborough, left, and Mika Brzezinski, right, speak onstage during the “Morning Joe” panel during the 2012 Winter TCA Tour in Pasadena, California, on Jan. 7, 2012. (Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images)
By Michael Schwarz November 19, 2024 at 12:09pm
Establishment shills masquerading as journalists must now make role-defining choices.
Either they can openly acknowledge that President-elect Donald Trump’s landslide victory in the 2024 election amounts to a repudiation of their incessant lies and therefore requires a new approach, or they can make an indirect acknowledgement of that repudiation by doubling and tripling down on the unhinged behavior that explains why the vast majority of Americans regard them with contempt.
Monday on the social media platform Bluesky, Washington Post opinion writer and MSNBC contributor Jen Rubin opted for the latter approach when she hinted that outraged viewers should boycott MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” after longtime co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski admitted on-air to having recently met with Trump at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
“The market works great. You can stop watching Morning Joe anytime,” Rubin wrote on Monday evening.
The market works great. You can stop watching Morning Joe anytime.
— Jen Rubin (@jenrubin.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 8:09 PM
Earlier in the day, Scarborough and Brzezinski had announced their surprise meeting with Trump, which took place on Friday.
In what felt like a hostage video, the husband-and-wife co-hosts tried to have it both ways.
Have you ever watched MSNBC?
On one hand, they expressed a desire to “restart communications” with the victorious president-elect. On the other hand, they pledged to their audience of rabid Trump-haters that they would not “defend or normalize Donald Trump.”
In the end, their spiel probably convinced no one of their sincerity. Trump supporters have no reason to trust Scarborough, Brzezinski or anyone else in the establishment media. And judging by Rubin’s response, some unhinged liberals appear poised to abandon “Morning Joe.”
“On MJ: If you don’t appreciate the audience you have, betray that audience and lose their trust you are ging to lose lots of them. i have seen this movie,” Rubin wrote Monday.
On MJ: If you don’t appreciate the audience you have, betray that audience and lose their trust you are ging to lose lots of them. i have seen this movie.
— Jen Rubin (@jenrubin.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 8:50 PM
Rubin’s string of “Morning Joe”-related comments followed another Bluesky user’s denunciation of the co-hosts as opportunists.
“Sold us out for access,” the user wrote.
“Disgusting,” Rubin replied.
Disgusting.
— Jen Rubin (@jenrubin.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 7:26 AM
Happily, the unfolding civil war among anti-Trump liberals will help us distinguish between two different categories of establishment shills.
By meeting with Trump, Scarborough and Brzezinski showed that they belong in the first category. This group includes, for instance, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and anyone else whose post-election behavior suggests that he or she never actually believed the inflammatory and dangerous anti-Trump rhetoric with which they filled their angry and impressionable supporters’ heads on a near-daily basis for the last nine years.
In other words, when they likened Trump to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, they knowingly lied.
Meanwhile, Rubin and other seething bigots of her ilk will accept no narrative except the one that dehumanizes Trump. She, therefore, belongs to the second category: those who appear to believe the lies they have peddled or absorbed.
Indeed, the very fact that Rubin and others have taken refuge in Bluesky’s liberal echo chamber shows that they prefer intellectual incest to the sort of open dialogue that might “humanize” Trump or his supporters, whose ubiquitous presence on Elon Musk’s social media platform X has left establishment liberals pining for the days when they could censor anyone whose ideas annoyed them.
In the bigger picture, of course, Rubin and her second-category compatriots personify the imminent demise of the establishment media.
In October, for instance, Gallup once again reported “record-low trust” in that once-trusted institution.
Thus, whereas Scarborough and Brzezinski performed what amounted to a cosmetic and rear-guard action designed to give the appearance of preserving what very little remained of their journalistic integrity, they have at least openly acknowledged that they must pursue a different course.
Rubin, on the other hand, encouraged her fellow Trump-hating liberals to burn the proverbial boats. By continuing to perpetuate nine years of lies and thereby embracing her unofficial role as pro-establishment activists, she seems to think that she and others like her will have a future in media, which, as she rightly indicated, operates on “market” principles.
Unfortunately for Rubin, she does not seem to understand that the “market” doomed MSNBC in the first place.
In other words, Trump won in part by exposing the lies peddled by phony journalists like Scarborough, Brzezinski and Rubin.
Now, Rubin thinks that angry liberals’ way forward involves excommunicating her fellow liars who do not hate Trump enough. That, of course, amounts to a recipe for more complete marginalization of unhinged establishment shills like Rubin.
With that in mind, we wish her good luck.
Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.
Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.
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