Joe Scarborough went to Mar–a-Lago this weekend to meet with Donald Trump, a year after accusing Trump of "going full blown Hitler" during his primary campaign.
Scarborough, alongside his wife and Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, told their audience earlier today that they went to Florida to visit the President Elect on Friday, November 15, to "restart communications" with Trump.
Speaking on their show, Brzezinski said: "Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally with President Elect, Trump.
"It was the first time we have seen him in seven years."
Scarborough then added: "Now, we talked about a lot of issues, including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets. We talked about that a good bit.
"And it's going to come as no surprise to anyone who watches this show...that we didn't see eye to eye on a lot of issues and we told him so."
Brzezinski said that the pair had not spoken to Trump since 2020, although she added that Scarborough made a personal call to Trump after he survived his assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania earlier this year.
Scarborough was a registered Republican until Trump took office in 2017 and served as the Republican Congressional representative for Florida's 1st district between 1994 and 2001.
He registered as an Independent in 2017 and has since been an outspoken Trump critic on his MSNBC show for the past seven years.
Scarborough has previously accused Trump of "fascist talk".
In a reference to Trump's comments that undocumented immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country", and to the Trump family ancestry, Scarborough said: "Drumpfs came here from Germany when just having a name Drumpf and being from Germany was seen as anti-American and seen as poisoning the bloodstream."
"And now we're just going full-on Hitler talking about vermin," he added.
Brzezinski addressed the apparent detente with Trump by saying: "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.
"We have been as clear as we know how in expressing our deep concerns about President Trump's actions and words in the coarsening of public debate.
"But for nearly 80 million Americans, election denialism, public trials, January 6, 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."
She added that Trump came across as cheerful, and open to working with Democrats on key issues.
Do you have a story we should be covering? Do you have any questions about this article? Contact LiveNews@newsweek.com
English (US) ·