Morning Joe hosts drop Trump allure offensive and have on-screen meltdown over his first acts in workplace

The set of MSNBC’s left-leaning daily wakeup show Morning Joe devolved into a heated debate about President Trump’s mandate Tuesday after a guest commented on Americans’ support for the new commander-in-chief’s January 6 pardons.

Hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski quickly took offense after a show regular, marketing maven Donny Deutsch, claimed Trump’s election win proved he has ‘co-opted America’s heartbeat’ and that even non-MAGA types are willing to swallow the pardons.

The married cohosts, just weeks removed from a hat-in-hand trip to Mar-a-Lago where they met with the then president-elect personally to try and mend fences after publicly savaging him in the runup to the election, were set off.

It all started on the lead-in show, ‘Way Too Early’ as host Ali Vitali paved the way for a back-and-forth that offered a fresh glimpse at the couple’s political preference.

Vitali brought up the pardons and Trump making good on his word, telling viewers: ‘Support him or not… this is how it is now.’

Scarborough – who had previously dismissed criticism over the Mar-a-Lago meet as proof of a ‘massive disconnect’ between ‘social media and the real world’- claimed on Morning Joe Tuesday that the election had been close –  ‘1.5 percent’, he said.

Trump, however, won 312 electoral college votes, and Kamala Harris just 226. He also claimed the Republican majority in both congressional houses is still small. In the house, Republicans have 220 seats compared to the Democrat‘s 215. Only 218 is needed for a majority. In the senate, the GOP has 53. In that case, just 50 are needed.

At this point, Deutsch, who has hosted shows on both MSNBC and CNN, interjected, and the battle was on. ‘I just want to add one thing to that,’ he told Scarborough midsentence.

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‘We can say that to ourselves, [but Trump] has co-opted America’s heartbeat.’

The claim – made in reference to Trump’s executive order pardoning some 1,500 January 6 defendants – left Brzezinski visibly furious.

‘Well, if America’s heartbeat is to have hostage families standing behind him, that marketing visual is quite something,’ she sneered.

Her remark appeared to reference Trump’s standing with Israeli relatives of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza at a post-inauguration rally in Washington Monday, in a simple show of solidarity.

‘I’m not saying you might not like that,’ Deutsch replied, trying to defuse the situation. ‘Listen to me,’ he told the host – who shot back ‘I’m talking about [January 6]’. 

‘People will absorb it because he gives them what they want in other places,’ Deutsch persisted, weeks after telling the pair – on the air– that Democrats needed to move to more center.

Shouting at this point, he added that he merely wanted ‘Democrats to learn that you can even get away with things as ridiculous as that, if you’re feeding people what they want to hear.’

‘Yeah,’ Brzezinski agreed, at this point accepting the former MSNBC anchor’s olive branch.

Her husband, however, did not seem so willing – tensely telling the man pulled from his position in 2010 for openly panning co-worker Keith Olbermann on the air essentially what he had just said.

‘Well, he actually told them,’ he said of Trump’s promises to pardon those who participated in the insurrection. ‘Told them again. He told them what he was going to do.’

‘He did,’ Brzezinski at this point noted in agreement.

Scarborough, condescendingly speaking from the perspective of conservatives, went on: ‘And he’s providing the bread and the circuses as they said in Roman days.

 ‘That entertains them,’ he asserted. ‘But underneath that, there are are things that he’s doing breaking one norm after another.’

‘You can’t ignore,’ Brzezinski again chimed in.

Deutsch, at this point, responded, again repeating his unheard point: ‘Nobody’s saying ignore it, I’m saying the opposite, actually.’

Scarborough, however, couldn’t help but get the last word, curtly telling the contributor: ‘After promising that he was going to break every norm.’

The segment went on to finish, before cutting to a break.

In addition to pardoning January 6 pardons in front of TV cameras, Trump on Tuesday commuted the sentences of eight more. 

Previously, he said ‘pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists’ was ‘chief on that list’ of priorities’ – a promise host Vitali pointed out was made ‘with the stroke of a pen’.

Last month, the new boss of the media firm that oversees MSNBC, SpinCo CEO Mark Lazarus, started making it clear that he wants more Republican voices on the network – and to move more opinion content out of primetime along with cuts to presenters’ pay. 

This comes weeks after the CEO is said to have slashed Rachel Maddow’s pay by some $5million, after she agreed to stay with the network for another five years.

The details came from insiders who spoke to both Status and The Ankler. Hosts have not yet been asked to shift on-air attitudes, sources said.