MSNBC contributor trashes network, shreds 'Morning Joe' colleagues over Trump meeting: 'This is not working'
MSNBC contributor Jennifer Rubin went on an unprecedented tear against her own network as well as her "Morning Joe" colleagues Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on her podcast, defiantly criticizing her employer's business model and ratcheting up her attacks towards the duo for revealing their meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.
On Friday's installment of "Jen Rubin's Green Room," Rubin accused Scarborough and Brzezinski of "forgetting" that their audience "despises Trump" and that viewers wanted them to "hold the line against Trump" instead of engaging with the incoming president.
"What were they thinking? Who do they think their audience was?" Rubin asked. "Well, perhaps this wasn't about their audience. Perhaps this was them trying to defend themselves or avoid retribution that they thought was coming their way. But really, these are rich, famous people. What have they got to worry about? It was just an appalling example at how eager so many elites are to fall in line, to curry favor, to deflect attention, to deflect any kind of incoming criticism that might come their way from the White House."
"So they are getting hammered for it. They are hemorrhaging their audience. And this, of course, only exacerbates the reason and the problem why MSNBC and its other cable networks are being spun off. And that is, cable television is dying," Rubin said. "Most of you probably haven't watched MSNBC since the election either, and not understanding your audience and continuing to serve up the same chewed-over talking points with the same panels, essentially same program day, after day, after day, hour after hour, is no longer working. So Comcast has said, 'Fine, spin you off. You guys go fend for yourselves. And the question after the spin-off is completed will be whether that's a viable business model. Can they afford to pay Rachel Maddow, God bless her, 20 plus million dollars a year? Is there advertising to support that? Are there cable fees to support that? We don't know. We don't know if MSNBC, a year from now, is gonna exist, or whether it's gonna be in some slim down fashion."
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Rubin, also a Washington Post columnist, went on by offering suggestions on how MSNBC can "rethink their model."
"Get rid of the pattern of chewing over the same three or four stories all day long with a shuffling of panelists all parroting back the same line to the host, this is not working. It's boring. It's not good TV. They need to do something else, and they should look to models that are successful," Rubin said. "They should look to people like The Onion. Hey, they've purchased Info Wars. I can't wait to watch what they're gonna program. They should look to shows that, yes, are perhaps lighter on the news, but actually have much more information than they do."
She went on to say that viewers "get more from a John Oliver monologue" than they do "from a day or two of watching CNN or MSNBC."
"And by the way, I'm an MSNBC contributor," Rubin reminded her liberal audience. "At least I have the honesty, I have the candor, to tell you this is not gonna work, and this is not continuing to work. And what's more, by hanging on to these legacy outlets that are failing, I think Democrats fail to explore other options. They fail to look for other avenues to communicate with the public. They are relying on dying outlets in a dying industry, cable TV news, and they have to be way more innovative, way more creative in figuring out ways to reach people, including people who don't like politics all that much, and that's the big challenge. Those were the people who, frankly, went along voting for Trump because they did not know too much about what he had in mind and what he had planned, and really his threat to their well-being."
"So I think once we get past a stage in which we are doing the same thing over and over again, otherwise known as the definition of insanity- if you expect a different result, then perhaps we can experience some innovation, and maybe we can expect something better from news… But you know one thing, you can always come here, because I'm gonna tell you what I think. I'm gonna be provocative… We're gonna tell the truth. We're gonna talk to you. I want to hear from you, because unlike Mika and Joe, I care about my audience, and I wanna hear what you think," Rubin added.
Rubin did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. A spokesperson for MSNBC declined to comment.
While Rubin is currently urging MSNBC to get rid of the formula of "panelists all parroting back the same line to the host," she was notably vocal against NBC's hiring of former RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel (she was fired following swift backlash from the network's liberal stars).
Ruben previously fueled a boycott against "Morning Joe."
"The market works great. You can stop watching Morning Joe anytime," Rubin wrote on social media Monday.
She then added on the social media site BlueSky:, "On MJ: If you don't appreciate the audience you have, betray that audience and lose their trust you are [going] to lose lots of them. I have seen this movie."
Rubin was also outspoken against her other employer The Washington Post and its billionaire over Jeff Bezos over his decision to halt the paper's endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris just days before the election.
"First of all, I do not believe the reason stated. I don't believe they have suddenly decided— he has suddenly decided that we should endorse everybody except presidential candidates, and that of all the elections, this is the one to start with this new policy," Rubin said on her podcast last month. "We endorsed a presidential candidate in 2020 no problem. And I perceive this, and even if it's not intended, it is inevitably perceived as bending the knee to Donald Trump at the worst possible moment when democracy is on the line."
"You have a billionaire who has a business aside from the Post that does business with the federal government deciding not to run afoul of a man who has declared war on democracy and on the free press, and I still find it absolutely inconceivable that someone who owns a newspaper would do this," she continued."