“We were flooded with phone calls from people all day, literally around the world.”
Sure, Jan.
Source: Daily Beast
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough downplayed a furious online response to the revelation that he met with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday’s Morning Joe.
Scarborough and his wife, co-host Mika Brzezinski—who have fiercely criticized Trump since his first term—told viewers a day earlier that they’d met with the president-elect last week, explaining they agreed to “restart communications” with the Republican. Trump separately said the meeting with two of his leading critics had been “extremely cordial.”
The bombshell news triggered an intense response from commentators variously accusing Scarborough and Brzezinski of kowtowing to Trump in the hope of improving their ratings or just simply sucking up to power.
But the online backlash didn’t correspond with what was happening offline, Scarborough said Tuesday.
“I just want to say thank you, first of all, to everybody who was so kind last night,” Scarborough said. He went on to say that on Monday, he’d seen “for the first time what a massive disconnect there was between social media and the real world.”
“Because we were flooded with phone calls from people all day, literally around the world,” Scarborough said. “Very positive, very supportive, going: ‘I understand why you did what you did,’ et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But once in a while I would get a text or a call from somebody going, ‘Oh man, I hope you’re doing OK.’”
Jon Stewart put it best.