•
Peter Baker,
New York Times columnist. • Louis Burgdorf, former
Morning Joe correspondent and producer •
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former
National Security Advisor to
Jimmy Carter and the father of co-host Mika Brzezinski •
Pat Buchanan, past co-host of
CNN's
Crossfire and
MSNBC's
Buchanan and Press. A former presidential candidate and an on-air personality beginning in 2002, Buchanan was suspended by
MSNBC in October 2011, following the publication of his book
Suicide of a Superpower due to alleged racist slurs, specifically in its chapter titled "The End of White America". Four months later, MSNBC severed its relationship with Buchanan. •
Tom Brokaw, NBC News special correspondent and former
NBC Nightly News anchor •
Erin Burnett,
CNN and past
CNBC anchor. In her role as anchor on CNBC's
Squawk on the Street, Burnett regularly contributed as the correspondent during the daily 8:30am "Business Before the Bell" segment. She left CNBC for an anchor position at CNN in May 2011. Scarborough habitually introduced Burnett with the nickname "International Superstar". •
Jonathan Capehart,
Washington Post editorial page writer and host of MS NOW's
The Saturday Show and
The Sunday Show. •
Tucker Carlson, political commentator. Carlson left
MSNBC to work as a commentator for the
Fox News Channel in May 2009. •
Robert Costa national political reporter for
The Washington Post •
Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's
Mad Money •
Harold Ford Jr., former
Democratic Leadership Council chairman, former
Congressman from
Tennessee and visiting professor at
New York University. •
Nancy Gibbs, managing editor of
Time. Gibbs revealed the cover of the coming week's magazine every Thursday. •
Robert Gibbs, MS NOW political analyst and former
White House Press Secretary for
Barack Obama. •
Mark Haines, the late co-anchor of
CNBC's
Squawk on the Street. Haines filled in for his co-anchor Erin Burnett on several occasions for the "Business Before the Bell" segment. He briefly took it over after her departure from CNBC until his death on May 24, 2011. •
Mark Halperin, former MS NOW senior political analyst, former co-managing editor of
Bloomberg Politics, and co-author of the presidential-campaign histories
Game Change and
Double Down. •
Courtney Hazlett, supervising entertainment editor for NBC News' digital properties, NBCNews.com and TODAY.com. •
Kasie Hunt, American political correspondent for CNN and host of
The Arena with Kasie Hunt. •
Julia Ioffe,
Atlantic journalist. •
Bill Karins,
NBC News meteorologist. •
Nicole Lapin,
CNN and past guest anchor on
CNBC's
Worldwide Exchange. •
Chris Matthews, host of
MS NOW's
Hardball with Chris Matthews. • Jackie Meretsky,
NBC Weather Plus meteorologist. NBC shut down NBC Weather Plus in December 2008, thus eliminating her position. She was on maternity leave at the time. Meretsky joined
Good Morning America as a meteorologist in 2011. •
Mike Murphy, political analyst and
Republican party strategist. •
Peggy Noonan, op-ed columnist for the
Wall Street Journal. •
Lawrence O'Donnell, host of MS NOW's
The Last Word and
Emmy-winning writer and producer for the TV series
The West Wing. •
Norah O'Donnell, senior correspondent for CBS News and a contributing correspondent for 60 Minutes. • Heidi Przybyla, former
MSNBC senior political correspondent. •
John Ridley, screenwriter and
Huffington Post contributor. •
Fred Roggin,
KNBC-TV sports anchor. Between 2007 and 2010, Roggin contributed a taped sports scores and highlight recap for "The Sideline" and "Morning Sports Shot" segments during the 6:00am hour. Co-host Willie Geist gradually took over the segment in 2010. •
Noah Rothman, Associate Editor of
Commentary magazine. •
Tim Russert, the late host of NBC's
Meet the Press. •
Jeffrey Sachs, economist and Director of
The Earth Institute at
Columbia University. •
Sam Tanenhaus, senior editor of
The New York Times Book Review. Between April 2009 and March 2010, Tanenhaus would appear on either the Thursday or Friday show to preview
The New York Times Book Review's forthcoming issue. •
Chuck Todd, former NBC News host of
Meet the Press and
Meet the Press Now on NBC News NOW.
Chris Matthews "messed around" comments On January 9, 2008, the morning after
Hillary Clinton's surprise victory in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary, Matthews appeared on the show and said of Clinton, "I'll be brutal. The reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win there on her merit." The comments, widely reacted to as sexist and unfair, were criticized by such diverse media figures as
Bill O'Reilly, and
Gloria Steinem. They also led to protests outside NBC's Washington, D.C. studios, as well as a joint letter of complaint to NBC from the
National Organization for Women,
Feminist Majority, and the
National Women's Political Caucus. Matthews apologized for the comments on the January 17, 2008, edition of his program,
Hardball with Chris Matthews. In another incident on June 29, 2011, then
Time editor-at-large Mark Halperin commented that the president came off as "kind of a
dick" during the previous day's press conference. The word aired uncensored, despite the seven-second delay, when a producer failed to press the button that would have "bleeped" it. Halperin issued an on-air apology immediately following a commercial break. The White House subsequently complained about Halperin's remarks, and on June 30, 2011, Halperin was temporarily suspended for "slurring" the president. He returned as a guest a couple of weeks later.
"Stunningly superficial" On December 30, 2008, Brzezinski's father and former
National Security Advisor to President
Jimmy Carter,
Zbigniew Brzezinski appeared as a guest to discuss the unfolding
Israel–Palestine crisis. Scarborough stated that
Yasser Arafat was offered everything he wanted at the
2000 Camp David Summit. This statement provoked Zbigniew to reply, "You know, you have such a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on that it's almost embarrassing to listen to you." Subsequently, the phrase "stunningly superficial" has become something of a running gag on the show.
Sponsorship Beginning on June 1, 2009,
Morning Joe was presented as "Brewed by
Starbucks", with the sponsor's logo incorporated into the show's logo. Although the hosts previously consumed Starbucks coffee on air "for free", in the words of the network's president
Phil Griffin, it was not paid placement at that time. The Starbucks sponsorship of
Morning Joe ended in 2013.
Feud with Jon Stewart On June 3, 2009,
The Daily Show host
Jon Stewart mocked the Starbucks sponsorship of the program, showing several clips of the
Morning Joe cast prominently displaying and complimenting Starbucks products as well as an interview with Starbucks CEO
Howard Schultz. Scarborough responded that his intent in discussing the sponsorship was sarcastic and he suggested that Stewart and his "90 writers" did not understand the joke. On June 8, Stewart feigned embarrassment over missing their alleged sarcasm, claiming, "At the time, I thought your jokey manner was just a way of sublimating your shame over the discomfort you feel deep in your soul after extinguishing the last smoldering embers of any of your program's journalistic bona fides. But now, I realize that that wasn't the case!" The next day, Stewart and correspondent
John Oliver again responded with a skit, involving Stewart impersonating
Napoleon and Oliver impersonating an even shorter
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. After the routine, Stewart joked that he hoped that this would be the end of the feud, since continuing it was becoming expensive for the show.
Clash with Rush Limbaugh During the
Obama administration, Joe Scarborough sought to distance himself from certain elements in the
Republican Party. He criticized Republicans such as
Rush Limbaugh who celebrated President Obama's failed bid to bring the
2016 Olympics to
Chicago saying that "Republicans have gone off the deep end." On the October 8, 2009 edition of his radio show, Limbaugh fired back by saying that Scarborough was "doing his best impression of [...] a neutered chickified moderate". Scarborough responded the next day on
Morning Joe, faulting Limbaugh for uncritical loyalty to
George W. Bush during the president's tenure in office. Scarborough specifically said that Limbaugh had put his "testicles in a blind trust for George W. Bush for eight years".
Russell Brand interview The
Morning Joe interview with actor and comedian
Russell Brand, a segment in the episode that aired on June 17, 2013, went viral on the Internet. He was there to promote his forthcoming stand-up comedy tour "The Messiah Complex". After the three interviewers (host Mika Brzezinski and contributors
Katty Kay and
Brian Shactman) repeatedly intercut the interview with personal observations of their guest—bantering among themselves whether they were able to understand his accent, referring to him in the third person, and calling him "Willy"—Brand protested at being talked about "as if he wasn't present and [as if he was] an extraterrestrial" before taking the interview over with a scathing commentary on what he perceived as a lack of professionalism and manners demonstrated by the interviewers. He appeared to confuse them with his direct, plain-speaking rebuke. In a final apparent attempt to offer an olive branch of humor to Brzezinski, Brand quipped "this woman is a shaft grasper" after she appeared to nervously stroke her water bottle.
Relationship with Donald Trump Early in 2016, the show and its hosts were criticized for their support to then-candidate
Donald Trump;
Matt Taibbi described the hosts as "lapdogs" and their relationship as "brown-nosing". The criticism was further exacerbated by a
hot mic recording published by
Harry Shearer on his podcast, where Scarborough and Brzezinski discuss with Trump the positive coverage of him, and the possible questions the candidate could get in their upcoming interview. In late June 2017, a conflict erupted between the hosts of
Morning Joe and President Trump. On the morning of June 29, the president posted a series of tweets mocking Scarborough and Brzezinski, with his comments about the latter widely condemned as misogynistic. The hosts responded with an op-ed in
The Washington Post, in which they described White House officials warning them of a negative article that would be published in the
National Enquirer if they refused to apologize for their coverage of Trump. Although the initial tweets received negative responses from both Republican politicians and political commentators including
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Trump retaliated on July 1 with another tweet describing Scarborough as "crazy" and Brzezinski as "dumb as a rock". Ten days after Trump's election in November 2024, Scarborough and Brzezinski met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Announcing this visit on their November 18 show, they told viewers they intended to "restart communications" with Trump. In the aftermath of the meeting with US President-elect Donald Trump, ratings declined by 15% overall and by 41% in the key 25-to-54 demographic. ==References==