In a "Ten Questions" interview in Time magazine, MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski plugged a new edition of her book Know Your Value, but Time's Belinda Luscombe also pushed her to thump Trump. Near the end, Luscombe asked "Do you regret any of your pre-election coverage?" For a while, Morning Joe was super-cozy with Trump. But Mika said they went overboard trying to get a Hillary interview (that never happened):
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Um, sure! But I take issue with the way people have seen it. I think that we gave consistent viewers a window into how Trump thinks: his relationship with Putin, his moral compass. I wish more Republicans had come on our show. The only other Republican was Lindsey Graham. We did everything we could to put Hillary Clinton on our show. We sucked up to her campaign in ways that embarrass me.
Wouldn't we like to see those e-mails and texts?
Luscombe asked nothing about the Brett Kavanaugh allegations -- perhaps because Mika hasn't been in the crush-Kavanaugh camp. Maybe this interview has been "in the can" a while, but the first unproven allegation against Kavanaugh is the magazine's cover story. Time did ask about Al Franken:
TIME: Do you think the #MeToo movement has taken down people who didn’t deserve it?
MIKA: No. Do you?
TIME: You’ve been supportive of Al Franken.
MIKA: I’ll take a risk and say that one doesn’t feel right to me. I know Al Franken, but looking at the public record, that one does not feel fair.
There was photographic evidence of sexual harassment/humiliation by Franken! But yes, Mika claimed on MSNBC last December “right now, any woman can say anything and a man’s career is ruined.” She explicitly claimed that “the evidence is – just hang on there, calm down – is debatable.”
The first two questions in the interview were on Trump:
TIME: The original edition of Know Your Value quoted Donald Trump before he was President. Is that why you decided to rerelease it, to expunge his presence?
MIKA: Not necessarily exactly because he was in the book. You could argue that it’s important to look at how people think, even sexists and misogynists. It had more to do with just how much more we could really talk about these issues now in the age of Trump.
TIME: You write of a lunch with the President where you and Ivanka raised the issue of women’s advancement. Have you spoken to her since?
MIKA: We are not getting along. I was extremely outspoken about her during the still ongoing and internationally humiliating child-separation policy issue. She wanted to talk. And I was just like, “I’m sorry. There is nothing to talk about until you step up for these children.”
