‘Morning Joe’ Hosts’ ‘Late Show’ Visit Hands Colbert His Top Rating in 2 Months
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski serve up CBS series’ best overnight Nielsen number since May’s “Daily Show” reunion episode
Tony Maglio and Brian Flood | July 12, 2017 @ 9:07 AM
Last Updated: July 12, 2017 @ 10:29 AM
CBS
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski stopped by Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” Tuesday night, handing the CBS series its best overnight ratings in more than two months.
Tuesday’s “Late Show” averaged a 2.9 rating in Nielsen’s local overnight markets. That is the show’s top mark since May 9, when Colbert pulled in a 3.1 rating with his “Daily Show” reunion episode.
Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Samantha Bee, Rob Corddry and Ed Helms helped Colbert out that night. The April 18 episode featuring Alec Baldwin also out-rated the “Morning Joe” appearance.
The MSNBC stars’ appearance ended up being “The Late Show’s” third-best rating of the season on any evening.
During the visit, Scarborough announced that he’s leaving the Republican party to become an Independent. He was asked by Colbert why Republican members of Congress were so unwilling to turn on President Donald Trump. Scarborough responded that Republican officials had “betrayed their core values.”
“I am a Republican,” Scarborough said. “But I’m not going to be a Republican anymore. I’ve got to become an Independent.”
Scarborough served as a Republican representative for Florida’s 1st District from 1995 to 2001.
“I think it’s inexplicable,” Scarborough said of the behavior of Republicans in Congress. “But this is well before Donald Trump was elected president that my party has betrayed their core values. I remember back in December of 2015 when Donald Trump supported a Muslim ban. I said on the air, ‘It’s very simple, it’s black and white.’ I said I could never vote for anybody in my party that would say they were going to ban people because of the god that they worshipped.”
Meanwhile, Mediaite columnist and top editor Colby Hall posted an opinion piece on Wednesday titled, “Joe Scarborough Disses Employer MSNBC By Announcing GOP Withdrawal on CBS.”
“The newly self-identified Independent raised the eyebrows of media insiders, however, by choosing to make the announcement not on the network that employs him, MSNBC, but rather on CBS’s ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,'” Hall wrote.
Hall added: “It is worth noting that news of Scarborough’s announcement was broken by ‘Late Show’ Show Runner Chris Licht, who is the former Executive Producer for ‘Morning Joe’ and often gets credited for helping put that MSNBC morning show on the map. So perhaps Scarborough’s decision to go on CBS was a favor to an old friend… But the executive suites at NBC and NBC News are most likely shaking their heads in frustration.”
16 'Morning Joe' Trump Insults That Got Personal, From 'Schmuck' to 'Jackass' (Photos)
President Trump recently received a ton of criticism for sending out a pair of tweets about MSNBC's "Morning Joe" hosts “Psycho” Joe Scarborough and “low I.Q. Crazy” Mika Brzezinski.
“She was bleeding badly from a face-lift,” he wrote of an encounter with Brzezinski he claims he had in Florida weeks before his inauguration.
TheWrap
While nothing can justify the president mocking a woman's appearance, the "Morning Joe" duo have been attacking Trump for months.
Check out 16 recent times the MSNBC stars said something that Trump could have taken personally.
MSNBC
They compared him to Kim Jong-un
“This is unprecedented, to have a president who behaves this way,” Brzezinski said on June 23. “It does feel like a developing dictatorship."
Guest Donny Deutsch unloaded on Trump's appearance
Deutsch defended Brzezinski on June 30 following Donald Trump’s attacks on her, calling the president “physically disgusting to look at.”
Deutsch continued: “Enough is enough with this disgusting vulgar man and to talk about women that way, and the irony is you physically look like you do, beyond the stupidity of it. You are a pig."
Brzezinski said what Bill Clinton was to sex, Trump is to "decency"
"What Bill Clinton did to the issue of sex to an entire generation, I believe this president is doing on issues of decency, on issues of conspiracy theories, on issues of fake news," Brzezinski said in June 15. "I think it's that simple and we're desensitized if we even argue it."
"If the president seems delusional about his accomplishments, you can point no further than that room," Brzezinski said in June 14. "There are no real men in the inner circle of the White House... none at all."
After Trump staffers praised the president during a cabinet meeting, Scarborough said on June 13 it “was the most sick, shameful, pathetic, un-American, autocratic display.”
He continued: “I will tell you if I were ever in meeting and people did that to me, I would say shut up and I would fire you.”
Brzezinski called President Trump a “narcissist” and said it’s possible that he’s “mentally ill in a way” on June 8.
She continued: “I said it months ago… he’s not well. At the very least he’s not well and he’s so narcissistic that he does not believe the rules apply to him."
“Donald Trump, again, being a schmuck, thinking he can buy people’s integrity by inviting them over to the White House and wowing them,” Scarborough said on June 7 when discussing a dinner party at the White House. “That’s how he thinks. I know that first hand.”
Scarborough said Trump “is not a sane, rational human being”
“If any CEO, in a Fortune 500 company, was behaving this way, he or she would be removed immediately… they would take him out, he would have psychiatric evaluation and he would no longer be the CEO,” Scarborough said on June 6.
Scarborough blasted “President Bannon” on June 2 for the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord on climate change — using the trolling phrase seven times in half a minute.
“Time magazine was right: Steve Bannon is the president of the United States,” the MSNBC host said, before launching into a 30-second monologue referencing “President Bannon” repeatedly.
The morning show played audio of Press Secretary Sean Spicer telling reporters during an off-camera gaggle that Trump’s “covfefe” tweet wasn’t a typo and Americans shouldn’t be concerned.
Brzezinski set up her fiancé, “You said… it’s like a kid pooping their pants and then saying, ‘I meant to do that.”
“Well yes. It would be like somebody pooping their pants and then people looking at it and saying ‘oh that’s modern art don’t you understand,'” Scarborough said on June 1.
Scarborough called Trump a “bumbling dope” on May 11 because of the way a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister was handled.
“Looking at the front pages of the newspapers here… The Wall Street Journal also, you look, of course, at pictures. The shameful picture where the United States press corps was kept out but the Russians were allowed in,” Scarborough said while holding up the paper.
Scarborough slammed Trump on March 31, saying that Russians are lucky that POTUS is “stupid enough” to pick up their fake news.
“We’re obsessed on how the Russians have hacked, how the Russians have tried to impact this, how the Russians have tried to impact the White House,” Scarborough said. “We’re really just playing into their hands.”
MSNBC stars Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski attack the president on a daily basis
President Trump recently received a ton of criticism for sending out a pair of tweets about MSNBC's "Morning Joe" hosts “Psycho” Joe Scarborough and “low I.Q. Crazy” Mika Brzezinski.
“She was bleeding badly from a face-lift,” he wrote of an encounter with Brzezinski he claims he had in Florida weeks before his inauguration.