Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann is doubling down on his criticism of Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, calling for the news network to fire them both.
Penning an article for Variety, Olbermann wrote about what MSNBC can do now that Donald Trump is returning to the White House and “Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski went on their show and welcomed our new insect overlords.”
“I mean, obviously you have to fire Mr. and Mrs. Scared-Bro,” wrote Olbermann, who hosted Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC from 2003 to 2011. “However: Continue their banal but largely benign political coffee klatch show without them and their insistence we all join their MSNVichy. Nobody will remember they were ever there.”
Last month, Olbermann blasted the Morning Joe hosts after they revealed on-air that they’d flown to Mar-a-Lago to meet with president-elect Trump following his election victory.
“BREAKING NEWS: I TOLD YOU SO,” Olbermann wrote on X at the time. “@joenbc and @morningmika – Trump collaborators. Not a word Mr. and Mrs. Vichy Quisling say can ever be trusted again – not that those words ever should have been trusted. They are confidence tricksters – and grifters.”
He went on to refer to Scarborough as a “political whore,” and wrote, “To political reporters, commentators, liberals, moderates: After this fawning, humiliating, network-destroying surrender, if you go on @Morning_Joe you have endorsed and bought into #VichyMSNBC.”
Fans had mixed reactions to Olbermann’s article, with one X user writing, “To sum up your article…your advice is to fire Joe and Mika and to give you a show. That ought to save MSNBC.”
Another wrote, “Well said! They should include YOU in their new format. Fox lite: Katie Tur, Chris Janson, need to go!”
“They need a whole new line up. Hire Mayor Peter and shake things up. They are unwatchable now,” said another.
“Well said. Agree 100!” added another.
“MSNBC needs new blood – Like to see you, Elie, Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo have shows,” wrote one commenter.
Another added, “You aren’t getting hired Keith. Nobody likes you.”
In his Variety article, Olbermann added that MSNBC’s attempts to appease the incoming administration will only further alienate viewers.
“The next money is coming from more fervent opposition to MAGA, not less,” he argued. “Wasn’t the Scarborough disaster (60% of the demo audience gone in three days) instructive enough?”
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Morning Joe saw a dip in ratings following their meeting with Trump. The Monday, November 20 episode, where the hosts discussed their meeting, brought in 839,000 total viewers and 113,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo, while the Tuesday, November 21 episode dropped to 680,000 total viewers and 76,000 in the key demo.
However, despite this dip, the show has remained steady since. Morning Joe averaged 691,000 total viewers during the week of the Trump meeting announcement, which was only a 1.7% decline from the previous week’s average of 703,000.
Olbermann continued, “Did you not notice CNN going from fact-based criticism of Trump’s madness to hours of cacophonous shouting and sinking to whatever is the next level down from irrelevance? Did the quarter of a million canceled Washington Post subscriptions not tell you something? Or the exodus from Twitter/X?”
The outspoken news reporter concluded that MSNBC needs to fight back, writing, “The bullies don’t stop hitting you because you’re nice to them. They stop hitting you when you knock them out cold.”
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