‘The View’ Co-Host Sunny Hostin Criticizes Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski for Meeting Donald Trump to “Kiss the Ring”

The View co-host Sunny Hostin has slammed MSNBC Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski for visiting Mar-a-Lago over the weekend to meet with President-elect Donald Trump.  

“The bottom line is America needs a free press that is willing to speak truth to power, right now more than ever. And I think we have to be very clear-eyed when we think about the President-elect and cover the President elect. And I don’t think you need to sit down for 90 minutes at Mar-a-Lago and kiss his ring to be able to speak truth and be able to cover a story,” Hostin said on the daytime talker on Monday as part of a clip posted by ABC to X, formerly Twitter.

Her comments followed Scarborough and Brzezinski starting their MSNBC program on Monday by disclosing their trip to Florida to meet with Trump, while also acknowledging that his decisive win influenced their decision.

Hostin accepted Scarborough and Brzezinski were “opinion journalists,” as opposed to reporters. But she added: “We have to remember that Trump is the guy who ushered in the era of fake news. He’s the guy who ushered in alternative facts. He is the guy who attacked three Black female journalists. He’s the guy that revoked Jim Acosta’s press credentials for asking a question. So I think this President-elect, I hate to say it, would like nothing more than to have only Fox News cover him, nothing more than a state media. And I don’t think he can be trusted in the way that other presidents can be trusted. This is an aberration.”

Also on Monday’s The View, Republican Alyssa Farah Griffin applauded the visit by the Morning Joe hosts.

“I’ve heard a lot of folks on the left coming after Joe and Mika, saying don’t normalize him. Well, 75 million-plus American voters normalize Donald Trump by making him president-elect Donald Trump. And the notion that if a sort of resistance who opposes him stayed in their safe bubbles, sat on their hands and complained about him for four years, that that would have a bigger impact than sitting down… This is absolutely the right thing. I would sit down with Donald Trump. I would interview Donald Trump and I’ll go a step further. I hope good people work for him,” Griffin said.

But fellow never-Trumper Anna Navarro followed Hostin in slamming the Morning Joe hosts for their visit. “In 2016 people voted for the unknown and voted thinking that maybe the gravitas of the office was going to change him,” she argued.

But in 2024, Navarro insisted Americans voted Trump back into the White knowing his record as U.S. president.  “And nothing he is doing, as concerning as I find it and disturbing as I find it, should be shocking, because he told us he was going to do these things, he was surrounded by the people he’s appointing. And he is keeping to his word and people voted for him knowing that,” she argued.

Navarro added she didn’t expect an invitation to Mar-a-Lago anytime soon. “The truth of the matter is, as we know around this table, that it is hard to criticize and denounce the abuses of power by Donald Trump when he is President. We have been there before. It means threats. It means death threats. It means retribution against your family,” she argued.

In contrast, fellow The View co-host Sara Haines also supported the Morning Joe hosts for their détente with Trump. “I absolutely think it was the right decision. They work on MSNBC. I don’t want only Fox people going to see them,” Raines argued after Fox News settled its billion-dollar defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems in the wake of the 2020 U.S. election.

“That’s the only network that’s had to pay billions of dollars because they got it wrong. So I don’t want only Fox people sitting down with him. I want everyone,” Haines added.