Red-faced pundits change their tune on Donald Trump

A couple of Trump derangement syndrome sufferers are eating plenty of humble pie.

It remains to be seen whether Donald J. Trump’s MAGA movement will really Make America Great Again after Trump becomes the 47th US president on January 20 next year. Or whether the Trump administration will make America healthy again if Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s appointment as secretary of health and human services is confirmed by the US Senate.

In the meantime, a couple of Trump derangement syndrome sufferers are eating plenty of humble pie. The reference is to Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who host the Morning Joe program on MSNBC. The couple were close friends of Trump up to around the time he became the 45th US president in 2017. Then the relationship turned sour.

Scarborough and Brzezinski became leading Trump antagonists – warning that Trump was a fascist who, if elected on November 5, would destroy US democracy.

So it came as some surprise when Brzezinski announced to viewers on Monday that she and Scarborough had travelled to Mar-a-Lago to meet the president-elect. It was the first time they had met since 2017.

Then Scarborough stated that it would come as no surprise to the Morning Joe audience that the co-hosts “didn’t see eye-to-eye (with Trump) on a lot of issues”. He added: “We told him so.” This would not have surprised Trump. But he was smart enough to receive the pair with courtesy.

Then Brzezinski added: “What we did agree on was to do something different and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him.”

How about that? Two of the best known journalists in the US decided it would be a good idea to talk with the president whose party would run the White House and would have majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. Quelle surprise.

So there you have it. On November 5, Trump was another Hitler. And within less than two weeks he was a democratically elected president-elect with whom there should be communication.

Brzezinski conceded that abuse was no substitute for reasoned argument, declaring: “Hyperbole and personal attacks will not work; my hair on fire doesn’t work; we’ve seen all that.” Like so many members of mainstream media in Western nations, the Morning Joe co-presenters failed to detect that Trump had considerable support in American society, especially among those earning less than $US100,000 ($150,000) and without a tertiary qualification.

It was much the same among many Australian commentators.

The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd appears to have experienced a similar metamorphosis. On November 2, she wrote a blistering attack on Trump. Dowd presented him as “a man with no character”. And she described the president-elect as “milking the emotions of Americans who don’t feel that things are working for them, who feel that government is corrupt and incompetent, who feel that it’s them versus Washington”.

A week later, all that had changed. Writing on November 9, in the wake of the presidential election, Dowd led off her column with this: “Some Democrats are finally waking up and realising that woke is broke. Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of black and Latino voters and young men.”

She accused the Democratic Party of embracing “a world view of hyper-political correctness, condescension”. Dowd added: “This alienated half of the country, or more; and the chaos and anti-Semitism at many college campuses certainly didn’t help.”

Neither the two Morning Joe presenters nor The New York Times columnist conceded that they misread the US electorate before November 5. They were not the only ones.

As I documented in my Media Watch Dog blog on November 8, the visiting experts who appeared on the ABC in the lead-up to the election got the outcome hopelessly wrong. Namely, Americans Anthony Scaramucci, Allan Lichtman and Ann Selzer, along with Rory Stewart from Britain.

The same can be said of ABC TV presenter Sarah Ferguson, who was sent, at taxpayer expense, to the US to report to Australians on the presidential election. In appearances on 7.30 (November 4) and Radio National Breakfast (November 6) she took far too much note of Selzer’s prediction that Vice-President Kamala Harris would win Iowa – with implications for some neighbouring battleground states. Another hopelessly wrong prediction.

Many of the Australian TV reporters who went to the US to cover the election – which often involved talking to other Australians – would have been better advised to stay at home and watch Fox News or Sky News on Foxtel.

Robert Cahaly (Trafalgar Group) and Matt Towery (InsiderAdvantage) appeared on Fox News’ Hannity program in the lead-up to the election. Both pollsters had predicted a Trump victory in 2016 and a Biden victory four years later. They got it right again in 2024.

As followers of the Fox News’ Gutfeld! late-night program will know, the retired black wrestler, now comedian, Tyrus (who was born George Murdoch – no relation) predicted that Trump’s victory would be evident by 10pm US eastern standard time. Reports from inside the rival camps suggest the Harris advisers privately conceded defeat at 9pm while the Trump team privately declared victory one hour later.

How is it that Tyrus got it right while so many of the American and Australian commentariat got the result wrong, by predicting a Harris win or by stating that the result would be extremely close? In other words, by substantially underestimating Trump’s support throughout the nation. This manifested itself in Trump prevailing over Harris by about 3.5 million votes.

The answer appears to be that the likes of Tyrus and Fox News presenters are more in touch with what average Americans feel. They are aware that, to most Americans, what’s important is economic and social wellbeing. Hence the focus on the cost of living, the prevalence of crime and border security. Moreover, many Americans are social conservatives.

It appears that Dowd now gets this – with her view that Americans are now working out that “woke is broke”. And the Scarborough and Brzezinski duo now accept that even presidents such as Trump deserve respect.

Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.