Senior Morning Joe Producer Jesse Rodriguez tweeted this out earlier this morning…
NEWS: Joe & Mika will moderate a town hall with Donald Trump airing in prime time tomorrow at 8pmET @MSNBC
Just Trump? Nobody else?
First of all how can Joe and Mika moderate a one person forum? What the hell is there to moderate?
Second of all, how exactly does this put to rest the background noise that Joe Scarborough is in the tank for Trump? Scarborough spent last week fending off Dylan Byers and others over charges that he and his show have lost their bearings vis a vis Trump. And now there’s this announcement which will just intensify the scrutiny level.
Look, I get MSNBC here. Trump means ratings. MSNBC wants ratings. An hour of Trump gets it that.
MSNBC also gets to poke a sharp stick in CNN’s eye since this forum will air opposite the first night of CNN’s own two night GOP town hall. NBC at least privately must be guffawing since CNN opportunistically swooped in and picked up its GOP debate after the RNC stupidly cut NBC loose. Paybacks are a bitch, Jeff.
Trump benefits because he gets to vape on MSNBC while his opponents are on CNN’s air Wednesday and then he gets to vape again the next night on CNN. It’s a win win for him. It’s a loser for his opponents on the first night though and I imagine the campaigns for Carson, Cruz, and Rubio are complaining privately to NBC News right now. I would imagine the RNC would be too except they burned that bridge already and they have nobody but themselves to blame for the state of affairs between themselves and NBC News after they blamed them for what the independently run CNBC did with that disaster of a GOP debate.
But it still plays out badly for MSNBC from an optics standpoint. MSNBC would love to get more GOP candidates on its air (as would NBC). But the only thing they may be able to do for the rest of the campaign season is get Trump and only Trump and only because it’s Joe and Mika who are currently being accused of being too cozy with the Donald.
That’s what the critics would say anyways. And there’s not much factual evidence lying around pointing to an alternate scenario.
Filed under: CNN, MSNBC
