Deadline - ‘The View’ Tackles ‘Morning Joe’-Donald Trump Détente: Sunny Hostin Slams “Kissing The Ring”

By Greg Evans

NY & Broadway Editor

November 18, 2024 9:11am



Opening the door to potentially constructive conversations or merely “kissing the ring” of the man who called new media the “enemy from within?”

This morning’s announcement by Morning Joe‘s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that they met with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday in an attempt to restart communications with the president-elect after seven years of bitter feuding and silence drew some heated and, not surprisingly, differing opinions on today’s The View.

While cohosts Sara Haines and Republican Alyssa Farah Griffin praised the Morning Joe détente as a welcome first step, Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro – two of the fiercer Trump critics on the ABC daytime talker – had some harsher words.

“The bottom line,” said Hostin, “is that America needs a free press that is willing to speak truth to power right now more than ever. I think we have to be very clear on it when we think about the president-elect and cover the president elect and I don’t think you need to sit down for 90 minutes at Mar-a-Lago and kiss his ring to be able to speak truth and be able to cover a story.”

Hostin conceded that Scarborough and Brzezinski are “not journalists in the true sense” but rather “opinion journalists,” but added, “You have to remember that Trump is the guy who ushered in the era of fake news, he’s the guy who ushered in alternative facts, he is the guy who attacked three black female journalists, he’s the guy who revoked Jim Acosta’s press credentials for asking a question…I don’t think he can be trusted in the way that other presidents could be trusted. This is an aberration.”

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