MSNBC staffers were reportedly furious over Brzezinski and Scarborough's meeting with Trump. An employee described the meeting as "cowardice" and "disgusting but frankly unsurprising," claiming it flew in the face of historian Tim Snyder's on-air warning to never "obey in advance," while speaking anonymously to FOX News Digital.

The employee said several staff members had become "largely disdainful" of the two hosts, referring to the meeting as "opportunistic" after spending the past two years comparing Trump to Hitler. MSNBC contributor Jennifer Rubin referred to the meeting as "disgusting" on her Bluesky account, a social media platform that has attracted users aiming to leave the platform X, which is owned by staunch Trump supporter Elon Musk.

MSNBC host Katie Phang wrote, "Normalizing Trump is a bad idea. Period," on her X account.

“Katie Phang is right. It’s normalization (and it’s access bulls–t) … Journalists don’t need access to their subjects to hold them to account. None of it is believable. The obvious answer is believable: They are opportunists," the anonymous employee told FOX News Digital.

Scarborough and Brzezinski revealed that they met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Friday (November 15), with both parties speaking in-person for the first time in seven years.

“Five years of political warfare has deeply divided Washington and the country. We have been as clear as we know how in expressing our deep concerns about President Trump’s actions and words in the coarsening of public debate,” Brzezinski said during the opening segment of Morning Joe on Monday (November 18). “But for nearly 80 million Americans, election denialism, public trials, January 6th were not as important as the issues that moved them to send Donald Trump back to the White House with their vote.”

“Joe and I realize it’s time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him,” she added.

Scarborough said he and Brzezinski spoke with Trump about several key issues including “abortion, mass deportation and threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets.”

“We talked about that a good bit,” he said. “It will 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.”

“What we did agree on was to restart communications," Brzezinksi added, acknowledging that Trump "was cheerful and upbeat" during the private meeting in which “he seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues.”

Trump also acknowledged the meeting, telling FOX News Digital that it was "extremely cordial" and that the two anchors praised his "flawless" presidential campaign.

“Many things were discussed, and I very much appreciated the fact that they wanted to have open communication,” Trump said. “In many ways, it’s too bad that it wasn’t done long ago.”

"[They] congratulated me on running a ‘great and flawless campaign, one for the history books,’ which I really believe it was, but it was also a campaign where I worked long and hard — perhaps longer and harder than any presidential candidate in history,” he added.

Trump vowed "to be open and available to the press" as "an obligation to the American public, and to our country itself," however, specified "that will end" if he's "not treated fairly."

Simon Conway