The left-leaning station pulled its morning talk show off the air on Monday following the assassination attempt on Trump over fears that one of its anti-Trump guests would make an inappropriate comment, according to a CNN report.
Scarborough and co-host wife Mika Brzezinski, staunch Joe Biden advocates, jumped right into coverage of the assassination attempt Tuesday, while initially only hinting at Monday’s drama.
“Good morning, it is very good to be here,” Brzezinski said.
It took an hour to fully address the controversy over the previous day’s absence.
“I just wanted to briefly talk to our friends and viewers that watch us every day and talk about what happened yesterday,” Scarborough said as he opened the key 7 a.m. segment
“We were told, in no uncertain terms on a Sunday evening that there was going to be one news feed across all NBC news channels yesterday, and today’s show would be Lester Holt.
“Other people that, well, you worked with on Sunday and that was going to be one news feed across all NBC news channels that we were going to stay as a network in breaking news mode throughout, all day yesterday.”
“That did not happen,” Scarborough noted.
“We don’t know why that was. That didn’t happen,” he said.
“Our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn’t happen, but it didn’t happen. We were also told it was going to happen throughout the day,” he said.
“And I guess after there was such a strong blowback about, yesterday morning, I guess they changed their plans. And so those plans changed as well. So it didn’t,” he continued.
“And, you know, we’ve talked about it, off the air. We’ll talk about it on the air because we talk about everything on the air. We were very surprised. We were very disappointed. And if we had known that there wasn’t going to be the one news feed, from NBC news across all NBC news channels. Willie, we obviously would have been in yesterday morning.”
MSNBC rolled out breaking news coverage Monday morning instead risking having someone on the show who could paint it and the network in a bad light, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
“And, you know, we’ve talked about it, off the air. We’ll talk about it on the air because we talk about everything on the air. We were very surprised. We were very disappointed. And if we had known that there wasn’t going to be the one news feed, from NBC news across all NBC news channels. Willie, we obviously would have been in yesterday morning.”
An NBCUniversal spokesperson denied the CNN report.
At 6 a.m. Monday — when “Morning Joe” starts – viewers instead watched NBC News special reporting and then coverage simulcasting from the company’s streaming service, NBC News Now.
“They were shocked,” an MSNBC insider said of the show’s production team, according to Fox News. “It was supposed to be one feed like it was this weekend. It was supposed to be one feed with all NBC News platforms.