“I was surprised by this reaction”

Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” says she didn’t expect the severity of the controversy sparked by the meeting she, her co-host and husband Joe Scarborough had with President-elect Trump late last week.

“I was surprised by the negative reaction,” Brzezinski said during a podcast conversation with The Daily Beast. “And the way I look at it is, people are really scared.”

One of the reasons she and Scarborough met with Trump is because “people are really scared by Donald Trump’s comments about him being, you know, a political adversary. A lot of people are scared about what happened with abortion,” she said.

“All of these issues are important to me and in some ways personal to me, but definitely personal to the people I really care about,” she added.

Brzezinski and Scarborough shocked many in the political media world when they announced they had held a meeting with Trump that they said was intended to “reopen” lines of communication between the morning talk show host and the former president.

“Make no mistake: We are not here to defend or normalize Donald Trump,” Scarborough said Monday. “We are here to report on it and hopefully provide you with valuable information and better equip us all to understand these deeply troubling times.”

However, the meeting drew criticism from many liberals and led to a drop in the show’s ratings.

Brzezinski and Scarborough have established themselves on cable news as some of Trump’s harshest critics in the media during Trump’s time in politics.

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