The hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program said they traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President-elect Donald Trump to “restart communications,” noting that American voters made their choice clear in the presidential election.
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who have been highly critical of Trump since he took office in 2016 and repeatedly criticized him on their morning show, said they met face-to-face with the president-elect late this past week at his Palm Beach, Florida, residence.
The president-elect told Fox News on Monday that the meeting did occur.
She said that “for nearly 80 million Americans, election denialism, public trials, January 6th were not as important as the issues that moved them to send Donald Trump back to the White House with their vote.”
“Joe and I realize it’s time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him,” Brzezinski said.
According to Scarborough, they spoke with Trump about issues such as “abortion, mass deportation, and ... political retribution.”
“It will come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show, has watched it over the past year or over the past decade, that we didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of issues and we told him so,” Scarborough said.
Chiming in, Brzezinski said, “What we did agree on was to restart communications.”
She said that Trump “seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues.”
Later in the segment, Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, said that he had heard reports that Trump may take a different approach to his second presidential administration because he cannot run for reelection due to term limits.
“This is a president who is not seeking reelection, so maybe, just maybe, now could be time for both parties to get to work,” he said.
The Epoch Times contacted the Trump campaign for comment on Monday but didn’t receive a response by publication time.
“I received a call from Joe Scarborough requesting a meeting for him and Mika, and I agreed that it would be a good thing if such meeting took place,” Trump told Fox News. “We met at Mar-a-Lago on Friday morning at 8:00.”
The meeting, the president-elect said, was “extremely cordial,” and he confirmed that “many things were discussed”
“I very much appreciated the fact that they wanted to have open communication. In many ways, it’s too bad that it wasn’t done long ago,” Trump said.
“[They] congratulated me on running a ‘great and flawless campaign, one for the history books,’ which I really believe it was, but it was also a campaign where I worked long and hard.”
Trump said that he wants to be available to the U.S. media, but cautioned that if he isn’t “treated fairly,” his relationship with them “will end.”
“We’re off to a good start, and I will be open and free as to further developments as they take place—that includes media relationships,” the president-elect said.
Trump will be formally confirmed as president-elect by Congress on Jan. 3, 2025, and will take office on Jan. 20, 2025.
