-My first guests tonight are co-hosts of "Morning Joe,"
which airs weekday mornings at 6:00 a.m. on MSNBC.
Here are Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski!
-Hey, how you doing? -Nice to see you.
There's a lot I want to talk to you both about.
First of all, thank you for just surviving this election cycle.
This has been pretty crazy. -Or a presidency.
-Yeah, no, it's been a crazy four or five years,
so I think all of us are exhausted.
We actually thought before 2016 --
we told our boss, Phil Griffin, at MSNBC.
I said, "Listen, after Hillary wins, this is exhausting."
-Take a break. -"We're going to take --
we're going to take about a two-month break."
-[ Laughs ] -And that never happened.
-Never. -No.
And I also want to mention, congrats on your anniversary.
Is it two years married for you guys?
-[ Laughs ] -Well, you know,
it's very interesting, Jimmy, you say that.
Actually, I know that. -Thank you!
I know that too. -And you know that.
-I know that. -Uh-oh.
-But right before we came on the show,
I turned to Mika... -No, I know that.
-...and I said, "Hey, do you know what today is, honey?"
And she said, "Uh, no, why?" -No, come on.
-Oh, my goodness. -It's our two-year anniversary.
She still doesn't know what month I was born in.
So that's my birthday. -Listen.
-So it doesn't matter. -When we did the show
this morning and I said what the date was to everybody,
something hit me that it was a special day.
-You knew it was special. -No.
-Yeah. -It was something about it.
-Something. -Some of us -- Some of us knew
it was special, and it really is now.
Now it's doubly special.
Congrats on that, guys.
I love seeing you guys together.
I love seeing you separately as well.
But together, it's unbelievable. It's magic.
You guys were hosting a special Saturday edition.
They kept adding these special editions of your show,
of "Morning Joe." -Yeah, it just kept going.
-And, man, I honestly -- I applaud you.
Thank you so much.
The American people thank you for just being on the air.
But you -- MSNBC made the call
that Joe Biden had become President-elect.
Joe, what was it like for you to make that announcement?
-Well, you know, something happened to me
that's never happened before in like -- what? --
17 years in television.
I had somebody say into my ear that Joe Biden is going...
-Alex. -...to be the 46th President
of the United States. Our EP Alex said that.
And I was supposed to, you know, do the Brian Williams --
"We have just received..." -He's good at it.
-"...word that Joe Biden
will be the next President of the United States."
I got, "Joe Biden is," and then I had to stop.
-And I got worried. -The last thing I wanted to do
was have anybody hear any emotion in my voice.
We were, especially since it was election coverage,
I wanted to play it straight down the middle.
Everybody knew that we were supporting
Joe Biden over President Trump.
But at the same time,
the last thing I wanted to do was get emotional.
-Start crying. -With a Cronkite moment,
taking off my glasses.
So I said, "Mika." -Yeah.
-And she said -- then she did the whole thing.
-Well, your work has paid off.
MSNBC and your show in particular
have been fantastic in the ratings.
So congrats on that if that makes you feel any better.
But I don't even know if you care.
At this point, you're like, "Let's just --"
-Nope. -"We just want a weekend off."
-Yes. -Yeah, exactly.
-It feels like there's never been a slow news day
during Trump's presidency.
-There hasn't been.
In fact, since the campaign, and as Joe said, we wanted --
every time you would want to take a break,
every time you go take a break, it follows you.
And now, literally, in this pandemic,
you cannot leave your job.
It is there with you 24/7.
And with this president,
it has been one you-know-what after another.
-Yeah, is this going to change the pace
of all news shows in general?
-I hope. I mean, don't you hope?
-Yeah.
-I'd take boring.
We can't wait to be boring.
-[ Laughing ] Yeah. -Yeah, I mean, I do think,
though, actually one of the problems
over the past four years --
actually probably over the past couple of decades --
is that politics has become a blood sport.
People turn to their channel.
-You call it a shock opera.
-Yeah, it is a shock opera,
and people root for their team, root for their side.
-I think we've been desensitized as well
to shocking news from the presidency.
And it's going to take a long time to unwind this,
no matter what side of this you're on.
-Yeah, and both sides watch your show.
I will say that, too.
I mean, it's good to have the conversation with them.
-Absolutely. -Yeah, it is.
And I think, you know, we used to go and give an awful lot
of speeches to civic groups,
and we just stopped doing it over the past several years
in colleges because things became so intense.
It used to be that Mika would get up
and she would take the more liberal view.
I'd take the more conservative view.
-We switched all around.
-We had this really fun back-and-forth.
And let's just say the fun has gone away a little bit
in the past couple years when it comes to talking about politics.
Let's hope we can get back to a place where we can talk civilly
about it again and at least be operating
from the same set of facts.
-[ Chuckles ] Well, Jimmy, when the show started --
So, I was sort of the straight man.
And then I saw myself on "Saturday Night Live"
and realized what's happened over the past four years
is we've switched roles. -Yeah.
-And I've become the crazy one. -You know, the funny thing is
everybody called us -- -He's driven me crazy!
-Not me -- Donald Trump.
-Do you think that he is going to concede?
No, he's not going to concede, right, Mika?
-Nope. -No.
-We have a bet on this.
That's all I'm going to say, and I'm going to win.
And it's a lot because I bet --
when I bet, I bet for a lot of money.
-Yeah.
Joe, why do you think that it's taking so long for Republicans
to acknowledge Biden's win?
-Yeah, I wish I knew.
You know, I was -- These people were my colleagues.
I served with them... -Your friends.
-...when I was young.
When I was 30, I got elected to Congress
and I served with a lot of these people
for eight years in Congress.
Seven, eight years in Congress.
And I've known them for almost a quarter of a century,
and I just don't recognize some of them.
I mean, these are people that we worked together.
We fought the good fight together.
We were used to -- you know, there were a lot of times
when many of us were trying to run Newt Gingrich out of town
and sort of leading a coup against his speakership.
And we were doing it because we didn't feel like
he was following his word, that he was keeping his word.
And to see a lot of these people just sort of blindly follow
Donald Trump over the past four years and say nothing
when President Trump actually was talking the last two weeks
of the campaign about throwing Joe Biden in jail,
having his attorney general throw Joe Biden in jail.
That's something that happens in Russia.
It's bizarre, and I just kept waiting for
my friends to speak up, and they just didn't do it.
-You never got, like, a little wink,
like a little Jack Nicholson, like "Cuckoo's Nest" like --
-Yeah. -Nothing.
-Nothing. -Yeah, they all do.
No, they will all give you the little wink off camera.
And they go, "Yeah, we know he's crazy. Yeah, yeah.
But that really does none of us any good.
People needed to start saying it on camera,
and for whatever reason,
they just couldn't bring themselves to do it.
-There's more I want to talk to you guys about.
Can you stick around for a couple more minutes?
-Would love to. -Absolutely.