At one point, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe show, had a friendly relationship with President Donald Trump. But it became clear the morning of June 29 — when the president falsely accused Brzezinski of bleeding all over his Palm Beach country club while recovering from a face-lift — that their relationship had turned sour.
This real-life couple and their relationship with the president is on display in the July 24, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.
Morning Joe, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary this September, has always been the “preferred programming of the political elite.” But early in last year’s Republican-primary season, Morning Joe started treating Trump as a plausible nominee and compared his candidacy to Reagan.
But then, in the summer, Scarborough shifted. He was once a conservative Republican congressman but had morphed into a centrist host. He began saying that Trump was unfit for president, then when Trump won anyway, left the GOP and announced he was an Independent.
Since then, both Scarborough and Brzezinski repeatedly questioned Trump’s soundness of mind. While Scarborough remains confident that the American system will overcome, Brzezinski, a Democrat, worries more about the future.
Sources in the White House attribute this shift in tone on Morning Joe to of a combination of being shut out of Trump’s personal circle and because Scarborough is jealous — it has always been thought that he has presidential aspirations.
The New York Magazine profile looks into the couple’s personal life as well. They got engaged in May but had kept their relationship a secret for a long time. It was ultimately Trump who announced their relationship to the world through a tweet.
Some day, when things calm down, I’ll tell the real story of @JoeNBC and his very insecure long-time girlfriend, @morningmika. Two clowns!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2016
According to New York Magazine, a senior White House official referred to Trump’s decision as the “most important” juncture in their protracted feud and that the description in the tweet was deliberate.
“It caused a lot of pain,” Brzezinski said in the profile.
More pain, in fact, than the tweet about a face-lift. Brzezinski has always been open about her struggles with body image. She told New York Magazine that in the end, it really didn’t matter.
“Who cares? We’ve been through a lot with this guy,” she said.
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