Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were supposed to go on vacation starting Thursday, MSNBC Morning Joe host Willie Geist said on Friday's show, but after President Trump made some personal and ugly comments about the pair, Brzezinski especially, they wrote a biting op-ed in The Washington Post and agreed to come on to respond in person. "I suspect that we do have some new viewers this morning," Geist deadpanned, "so I'll say what anyone who's watched even 5 minutes of this show over the past decade already knows: Mika's smart; she's strong; she makes people in power uncomfortable and she fears absolutely no one."
An hour later, Scarborough and Brzezinski sat down at the anchor desk. The last 24 hours have "been fascinating, and frightening, and really sad for our country," Brzezinski said. "I'm fine — my family brought me up really tough, this is absolutely nothing," she said, "but I am very concerned as to what this once again reveals about the president of the United States."
Scarborough explained how Trump has changed, and lost his sense of humor, over the past year.
Earlier, guest Donny Deutsch was a lot more blunt. "I'm not an employee of NBC so I'm going to go thug here," he said. "Because Mika is a friend of ours. She's a good woman. She's a great mom and he's a pig. He's a vulgar pig." Trump is "physically disgusting to look at — that's what I find ironic about the way he starts to always going after other people's physical attributes," he added. "Enough is enough with this disgusting, vulgar man — and to talk about women that way, and the irony is you physically look like you do, beyond the stupidity of it. You are a pig. You are a bully. And you are doing disgusting things to this country." He acknowledged that he was "taking the low ground here," called Trump "vulgar" and "disgusting" again, then said: "I'm sorry, I probably wont be on the show again." Peter Weber