WATCH: Matt Gaetz Donor Makes Pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago To Kiss the Ring

MSNBC cohosts (and passionate lovers) Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President-elect Donald Trump last week, the duo announced Monday on Morning Joe. It was their first in-person conversation with Trump in seven years. Many were shocked by the announcement, given that Scarborough and Brzezinski have repeatedly denounced Trump as a “racist” and a “fascist.” As recently as October of this year, Scarborough expressed disdain for the “pathetic people that are trying to cozy up to Donald Trump.” Now he’s one of them.

“It’s gonna come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show, has watched it over the past year or over the past decade, that we didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, and we told him so,” Scarborough said Monday. The MSNBC personality has previously accused Trump of waging “an attempted fascist overthrow of American democracy,” and assailed all of Trump’s supporters for “knowingly voting for a fascist.” Brzezinski, who recently condemned Trump for holding a “hate” rally in Madison Square Garden, described the president-elect as “cheerful” and “interested in finding common ground with Democrats.” The goal of the meeting, she explained, was to “restart communications.” Trump confirmed the meeting in an interview with Fox News and thanked the MSNBC power couple for congratulating him on a “great and flawless campaign, one for the history books.”

The pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago could also be seen as a desperate attempt to rehabilitate MSNBC’s reputation as a cesspool of partisan invective and racial grievance. The radical left-wing network’s ratings plunged as much as 50 percent in the days following Trump’s election. Its parent company, Comcast, is mulling whether to cut ties with MSNBC and other declining TV assets by spinning them off into a separate entity.

Alas, the network might be beyond saving at this point. MSNBC viewers were shocked to learn the Morning Joe hosts had met with Trump. Former Hillary Clinton strategist Adam Parkhomenko called it a “pathetic betrayal.” Liberal social media activist @JoJoFromJerz was seething with rage. “F—k Joe & Mika,” she wrote. “F—k Morning Joe. And f—k MSNBC if they keep them on the f—ing air.”

Scarborough is no stranger to controversy. He received a two-day suspension from MSNBC in 2010 for failing to disclose political donations to former congressman Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), who was then a candidate for the Florida State Legislature and was recently announced as Trump’s nominee for attorney general. Making the trip to Mar-a-Lago was presumably a humiliating affair for Joe and Mika, who enjoyed a close relationship with Trump during the 2016 Republican primary, when all mainstream networks were eager to juice their ratings by letting Trump call into their shows. That relationship quickly turned sour after Trump won the primary and the general election against Hillary Clinton. In a post complaining about the unfair coverage on MSNBC, Trump blasted “Psycho Joe” and “low I.Q. Crazy Mika,” while claiming to have seen Brzezinski “bleeding badly from a facelift.”

Morning Woe: Scarborough, Brzezinski Grovel to ‘Fascist’ Trump as MSNBC’s Fate Hangs in the Balance, Viewers Slam ‘Pathetic Betrayal’

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