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“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin is speaking out against Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s decision to meet with President-elect Donald Trump ahead of his return to the White House. The “Morning Joe” co-anchors visited Trump and members of his team at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, Nov. 15. It was the first time in seven years that Scarborough and Brzezinski met Trump in person, with Brzezinski saying that “what we did agree on was to restart communications.”
Hostin reacted to the revelation by telling her “The View” co-hosts: “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.”
Scarborough and Brzezinski are “opinion journalists” and not necessarily reporters, Hostin then admitted before adding: “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.”
Popular on Variety But not all of the “The View” co-hosts agreed with Hostin’s disapproval over Scarborough and Brzezinski’s meeting with Trump. Sara Haines said it was “the right decision” for the “Morning Joe” anchors to see the President-elect because “they work on MSNBC. I don’t want only Fox people going to see them.”
“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,” Alyssa Farah Griffin said. “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.”
Watch the the full discussion on “The View” here.
