Newspaper Reader.
Nov 18, 2024
Headline: MSNBC ‘Morning Joe’ Hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski Meet With Trump in Bid for “New Approach” to Coverage
Sub-headline: The hosts traveled to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, where they agreed to “restart communications” with the President-elect.
This is the stuff of T.V. Guide of the 1950’s : consider Julius La Rosa being fired by Arthur Godfrey on Air! Or is that stretcing the point?
Editor: let me quote at lenkth this Hollywood Reporter ‘scoop’?
Seven years after they last spoke to him, MSNBC Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski traveled to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend to meet with President-elect Donald Trump.
The duo, who used to be friends with Trump, turned into fierce critics during his first term in office, and he returned the favor, occasionally ripping into them in posts on X (formerly Twitter). At the top of Monday’s program, they disclosed their trip, acknowledging that his decisive win influenced their decision.
“Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him,” Brzezinski said. “For those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back, why wouldn’t we? Five years of political warfare has deeply divided Washington and the country.”
“What we did agree on was to restart communications,” Brzezinski added. “My father [former Jimmy Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski] often spoke with world leaders with whom he and the United States profoundly disagreed. That is a task shared by reporters and commentators alike.”
“I will tell you a lot of Democratic leaders we have talked to this past week since the election have told Mika and me, it’s time for a new approach,” Scarborough added.
Editor: here is an email from The Economist of November 17, 2024 by Adam Roberts : Digital Editor
I suspect, instead, that Mr Trump is being more Machiavellian. He probably also foresees, and may even welcome, that one or more of his chosen figures will fall away. Perhaps the Senate will block an appointment. Maybe, as details of police inquiries become public in one or more cases, a preferred candidate will be obliged to withdraw. Most of his chosen candidates will get through, but when one or more are blocked Mr Trump can have his cake and eat it: he will bewail the deep state, telling supporters that his opponents want to block the radical changes that he would supposedly bring.
And here’s my second prediction, for the slightly longer term. Elon Musk and Mr Trump will have an almighty falling out. I can’t see either man being willing to submit for long to the discipline or constraints that come from working closely with (or for) the other. Each expects to be the top dog. We suggest today how the Department of Government Efficiency, the joke-named institution that Mr Musk is set to run, might make the budget cuts it is set up to achieve. But stripping away a lot of public spending is bound to upset the lives of a lot of ordinary Americans—the ones who just voted for Mr Trump—by slashing funds for welfare, infrastructure, defence or by failing to pay off debt.
For all the drama in American politics, meanwhile, the most powerful effects of Mr Trump’s pending arrival as president are already being felt in foreign affairs—most obviously in Ukraine and Russia. Volodymyr Zelensky is putting on a brave face, saying that the war in his country will end sooner than had been expected, perhaps in 2025. With Russian forces continuing to gain territory, and Vladimir Putin bringing in extra fighters from North Korea, an early ceasefire is not the same as a good outcome for Ukraine. As our columnist on geopolitics writes in our new column, The Telegram, this might mean acquiescing, more or less, to Russian terms. In places such as Crimea and the eastern Donbas region, Russia will keep direct control of the territory it stole. In the rest of Ukraine, Russian influence will be indirect but still real, just as the Soviet Union held a veto over Finland’s political alignment during the cold war.
Dateline (our history quiz) and our test of whether you’ve kept up with the week’s news, the pint-sized news quiz, are both live. Can you get high scores in both?
Here’s my final prediction for the week: you will hear a lot more forecasts about 2025 from my colleagues. We are poised to publish the new edition of “The World Ahead”, setting out our political, economic, technological, cultural and other judgments for the coming year. (You can re-read last year’s edition, meanwhile, and check how we did last time around.) Our correspondents around the world, along with editors in London and some guest writers, will provide the best possible guide to the trends and events in 2025. It’s going to be a lively year. And if you’re a subscriber, you can join a live event on November 21st with Tom Standage, who edits “The World Ahead”. Sign up here.
A postscript to the various predictions for the American presidential election. I had vowed to namecheck everyone who correctly foresaw the number of electoral college votes that each candidate would get. Somehow, last week, I forgot to include mention of Nikos Kotalakidis, who correctly predicted that Mr Trump would take 312 votes to 226 for Ms Harris. Congratulations Nikos.
Editor : Can The Reader imagine those unrepentent Oxbridgers John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge of that long list of books : The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea (Modern Library Chronicles Series Book 12) ,The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World, The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It, A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Promise of Globalization, ever writing something like the quoted paragraph below?
Finally, I want to hear your views about Ukraine and Russia. What outcome do you expect for the conflict there, in 2025? Will Mr Putin soon be in a position to boast about defeating his neighbour, even after Ukraine received billions in military support from the West? Or is some other result possible? Might Mr Trump, anxious for a quick end to the fighting but also not to lose face, achieve a compromise that brings peace with Ukrainian (and Western) honour? Email me at economisttoday@economist.com with your thoughts.
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