Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said today that the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign went to MSNBC suits to try to get her pulled off the network.
Brzezinkski, a self-described liberal Democrat and Clinton supporter, claimed that that Team Clinton bristled at some of the criticism that she was dishing out about the campaign being too overconfident.
Both Mika and TV co-host Joe Scarborough also have had well-known on again, off again feud with their frenemy Donald Trump, during which they have thrown lots of shade in his direction.
Mika recently scolded U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren for being too angry and shrill about the president-elect.
In a discussion of so-called fake news, which the media echo chamber has seized upon as a major talking point, Mika Brzezinski made this disclosure. See clip below.
“Listen, I was concerned the campaign was not understanding that perhaps there was an arrogance; they needed to sort of get off their high horse and understand that this isn’t over. I’ll just say it: NBC got a call from the campaign. Like I had done something that was journalistically inappropriate or something and needed to be pulled off the air. I mean, think about that. That’s just, that’s shooting the wrong messenger.”
In a speech yesterday, without mentioning her losing campaign for the White House explicitly, Hillary Clinton bemoaned the fake news epidemic having “real world consequences,” and it must be “addressed quickly.”
In discussing the former candidate’s remarks, Scarborough chimed in today that “Hillary Clinton cost Hillary Clinton the election…Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff cost Hillary Clinton the election,” The Wrap noted . Scarborough, 53, is a former Republican politician who represented Florida’s 1st congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001.
Separately, writing in The Intercept , Glenn Greenwald of Edward Snowden fame leveled some fake news accusations against MSNBC itself.
“Back in October, when WikiLeaks was releasing emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming — with no basis whatsoever — that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored. That lie — and that is what it was: a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth — was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance, The Atlantic ‘s David Frum, and Newsweek ‘s Kurt Eichenwald. That the emails in the Wikileaks archive were doctored or faked — and thus should be disregarded — was classic Fake News, spread not by Macedonian teenagers or Kremlin operatives but by established news outlets such as MSNBC, The Atlantic and Newsweek .”
MSNBC anchor Brian Williams claimed on Tuesday night that “fake news played a role in this election and continues to find a wide audience,” the New York Post reported . Ironically, Williams was permanently booted off NBC Nightly News in February 2015 for making up war stories and other fibs, during which he acquired the derisive nickname “Lyin’ Brian” for telling a “chopper whopper.”
Kellyanne Conway, the Trump campaign manager who is now a senior adviser to the incoming 45th president, has said several times in various post-election venues that the most fake news during the campaign emerged from the poll-driven mainstream media , which continually insisted that the GOP standard-bearer couldn’t win the election.
. @KellyannePolls : The most fake piece of news I heard all along is that Donald Trump couldn’t win, how’s that for ‘fake news’? pic.twitter.com/CEfThXnqW7
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) December 9, 2016
Leaving aside fake news for a moment, despite Donald Trump’s contentious back and forth with the generally hostile media amid allegations that he will take an authoritarian approach with the press, the CEO of CNN parent Time Warner asserted on Tuesday that the First Amendment is or was more in danger from the Democrats than Trump. Jeff Bewkes claimed that that Democrats’ goal of overturning the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court decision posed a threat to free speech and a free press.
Last July, unconfirmed rumors surfaced that Joe Scarborough and the recently divorced Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC co-workers on the show for nine years, are in a romantic relationship.
[Featured Image by Peter Kramer/AP Images]