One of Joe Scarborough’s favorite words seems to be “hypocrite.”
The aging-hipster MSNBC host of liberal “Morning Joe” frequently blasted Donald Trump for apparent “hypocrisy,” fuming in October he makes hypocritical statements “every day.”
Yet despite their frequent blasts over the last eight years, last Sunday at Mar-a-Lago Scarborough, 61, and co-host wife Mika Brzezinski, 57, met president elect Donald Trump in a bid to settle their differences.
There are those, including Jon Stewart, who believe the term hypocrite would be well applied to Scarborough.
And those who know him say such behavior is nothing new.
A former guest on “Morning Joe,” who spoke anonymously for career reasons, told The Post, “Joe Scarborough has proven yet again that he gives opportunism a bad name.
“He is the hollow man. There is nothing inside him except for a need for success and social status.
“There is nothing he won’t do, say or bend. If he was a cartoon character – which he strongly resembles – he would be called Breaky Bendy.”
An MSNBC spokesman told The Post that he disagrees with this characterization
Trump supporters immediately trashed Joe and Mika for “shamelessness” and “kissing the ring” by suddenly sucking up to Trump.
Nikki Haley posted on X, “Let’s be clear, Joe and Mika didn’t suddenly see the light, they saw their ratings. They realized they needed Trump for their survival,” even though their viewpoint is opposed to his.
However, a network source scoffed at the claim, saying any high-profile journalist would want to take a meeting with an incoming president.
Scarborough already made one huge U-turn by becoming a host on the most liberal mainstream network. Previously, from 1995 until 2001 Scarborough was a Republican Congressman elected in Florida, who once even called for withdrawing from the UN.
“Twenty-five years ago, he spoke at the Princeton Club and came there as an elected office holder,” Doug Dechert, a media consultant who was there for the talk, told The Post. “The event was sponsored by Pfizer with free drinks and free hors d’oeuvres. I was shocked when he sold out at MSNBC. My guess is that there was no climbing the hierarchy as a Republican.”
As a congressman, Scarborough condemned Reverend Al Sharpton for expressing “racist and anti-Semitic views” — now he regularly has “the Rev” on his show to chat.
A former staffer on the show remembers Scarborough as “arrogant,” and that “he can’t deal with executive level decisions about programming.”
On the other hand, she said, there was a kind of political openness that is not always found on similar programs: “You could express policy viewpoints that [did not jibe with those of the show] and nobody would excoriate you for it.”
When Scarborough started on MSNBC in 2007 with a show called “Scarborough Country” he was a dyed in the wool Republican on TV, as he had been in congress.
Mika became his cohost and his democratic foil. Despite their political differences and heavy-handed exchanges – in 2016, during a tiff about Donald Trump possibly joking about Hilary Clinton’s assassination, Scarborough said to Brzezinski, “You’re a Democrat … it means nothing coming from you. You’re a Democrat” – they would soon announce their romance, and in 2018 got married.
However, before the relationship hit the news, whispers had been rife among employees of the show for years.
“I remember being out to dinner with a very well-known producer,” said the former staffer. “She said, ‘They’re totally doing it.’ She was like, ‘Watch the show and now that you know it, you’ll die.’ I guess the banter had a completely different flavor to it, knowing what was going on.”
Reached for his take on this, Mika’s former husband James Hoffer said, “How the hell would I know? … I don’t really watch the show.”
A source close to Joe and Mika told The Post, “Anonymously remarking on people’s personal lives is highly inappropriate.”
Politically speaking, Joe and Mika were not in opposing political camps for long. Though the couple visited Trump in Mar-a-Lago and even spent a New Year’s Eve there – before Trump characterized Brzezinski as “crazy” and maintained that her face was bleeding as the result of cosmetic surgery – Scarborough turned Democrat in 2017, making it public via an appearance on “The Late Show with Steve Colbert.”
However, now it’s unclear whether he could be about to make another bombshell political U-turn after his apparent make-up session with Trump.