The on-again, off-again relationship between Donald Trump and MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” is on again.

A saga that included cohost Joe Scarborough comparing Trump policies to Nazi-era Germany and the candidate tweeting that cohost Mika Brzezinski is “crazy and very dumb” has taken a distinctly positive turn.


The cohosts are now in regular communication with Trump and his circle — so much so that they are fielding criticism for being a house organ for the incoming administration.

"They have always been boosters. Things turned south when trump froze them out but coverage always stilted. They are transition spokesmen now,” tweeted a rival morning anchor, CNN’s Chris Cuomo, on Tuesday. (Cuomo declined to comment further.)

While Trump himself hasn’t appeared on the show in months, Scarborough and Brzezinski have been out in front with juicy tidbits like Trump’s anger over former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway’s broadsides against Mitt Romney. The story drove a news cycle, though Conway denied the charge and called “Morning Joe” sexist.

“I’m not sure how that reporting is sexist because those were sources at the top of the campaign,” Scarborough crowed on air.

Indeed, most viewers seemed to agree, knowing the cohosts’ direct pipeline to Trump Tower. Scarborough, in an interview, declared that he and Brzezinski talk several times a week with Trump himself. And last week, Brzezinski traveled to Trump Tower and visited Ivanka Trump for coffee.

"We talk to Trump a few times a week and say the same thing to him on the phone that we say publicly on the show,” Scarborough said. “We're just as blunt in person as we are on TV, whether we happened to be critical on the show that particular day or not.”

It counts as something of a comeback for the venerable morning talk show, which made its debut in 2007. Once considered must-watch TV for the Acela corridor, “Morning Joe” was in danger of falling off the rails as the 2016 election loomed ahead.

The buzz around “Morning Joe” — which prided itself on being the place that congressional chiefs of staff and top political reporters would tune in to see what was driving the day — had quieted, as had ratings for all of MSNBC. The "heat around the show seems to have dissipated,” The New York Times wrote in 2014.

But then came a boost: Trump, who had known Scarborough and Brzezinski for more than a decade, gave them an instant connection to the biggest political phenomenon of the year.

By August, however, the fruitful relationship, which led to many on-air interviews of Trump, was faltering. Scarborough and Brzezinski angered the candidate by calling his campaign “undisciplined” and saying he “had no idea” what he was saying. Trump lashed out on Twitter, calling the show “low rated” and the pair “two clowns.”

A few weeks later, Scarborough’s 25-year-old son was in a serious accident that landed him in the hospital. Trump, after months of not speaking to Scarborough, reached out.

“He just said when something like this happens nothing else matters, it’s all about the kids,” Scarborough recalled. “We had a nice personal conversation on the phone and he just said none of this [politics] matters. That was the first time we spoke in a long time and that probably made it easier for us to start talking later on.”

Indeed, many members of Trump’s inner circle, including his influential son-in-law, Jared Kushner, stayed in close contact with the show in the campaign’s final weeks. An NBC source close to the show says the Trump campaign appreciated that “Morning Joe” never wrote off their candidate, as other media did.

Now, in the wake of Trump’s election, “Morning Joe” is becoming a go-to spot for Trump watchers.

It’s a symbiotic relationship: Scarborough and Brzezinski need the access to Trump and his inner circle to break news, provide analysis and exert influence. And Trump, preparing to enter a city where most establishment types rejected him, needs the pair for their audience.

“Morning Joe” has never been a ratings behemoth, its viewership falling well below that of the broadcast networks’ morning shows and Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends.” But it has, over the years, cultivated a strong following among Washington insiders. And it’s been competitive with CNN’s morning shows even when its parent network lagged far behind CNN in overall viewers.

In November, “Morning Joe” led CNN in its time slot in total viewers (806,000 people to CNN’s 715,000), while CNN’s “New Day” beat it among the age 25-54 demographic that advertisers crave (251,000 viewers to 207,000). The two programs have seesawed between the No. 2 and No. 3 spots in cable-news ratings for their time slot for months, though the MSNBC program has led CNN in total viewers for nearly two straight years.

Trump played a role in that success, though the show’s relationship with the mogul was, and continues to be, regularly blasted as too favorable by its competitors, liberal organizations like Media Matters and even guests on the show.

“Morning Joe Hosts, After Carrying Water For Trump And Meeting Him Privately, Aghast That Anyone Questions Their Impartiality,” read a Media Matters headline last week.

Scarborough, for his part, vigorously denies that he’s pro-Trump. He notes that he has called Trump’s proposals and comments disqualifying, racist and unconstitutional, while comparing some of his rhetoric and proposals to those of Nazi Germany.

Scarborough also says he did not vote for Trump in the primary or general election. On Wednesday, Scarborough continued criticizing Trump’s Cabinet picks, blasting the “sycophants” who surround the president-elect and suggesting Trump doesn’t have in place “really, really smart” people who can help him in domestic policy.

“With these picks, Trump will never get through a Republican Congress meaningful economic policy,” Scarborough said.

But that doesn’t mean Scarborough and Brzezinski haven’t praised Trump and his political talent, including his ability to run circles around the media and turn in surprisingly good debate performances.

“My God, it was epic,” Brzezinski, the liberal counterbalance to conservative Scarborough, said the morning after the second presidential debate. “No Republican in America could have done what he did last night. It was vintage Trump. He produced a daylong show that rocked the political world.” (Brzezinski declined to comment via an NBC spokesperson.)

Scarborough has also given Trump personal advice, boasting at a panel in February that during a visit with Trump, he had urged him to read before debates. Now, he tells Trump his opinion on Cabinet picks, both in private and on air, advertising his dislike of potential nominees such as Rudy Giuliani. Not everyone finds that advice-giving relationship appropriate, even for a morning-show host who bills himself as an analyst rather than a reporter and is a former Republican member of Congress.

“Even somebody like a morning show host plays a role, at least a quasi-journalistic role — I’d argue it’s journalistic — in setting the parameters of the national conversation around these candidates,” Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik said on CNN in February. “You shouldn’t be so involved with them that you’re going down and giving them tips.”

Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan recently lumped Scarborough in with Fox’s Sean Hannity and regular “Morning Joe” guest Mark Halperin as examples of journalists who have traded “accountability" for “access." In February, CNN reported that Scarborough’s closeness to Trump was making some NBC colleagues uncomfortable.

“With Trump, only those most willing to essentially, if unofficially, join the team themselves will get continued, dependable access,” Sullivan wrote last week.

To be sure, the “Morning Joe” cohosts and Halperin are not nearly as big boosters of Trump as Hannity, who at one point filmed a pro-Trump advertisement. (Fox said at the time that it had not been aware of the filming and that he would never do it again.) But Trump himself has credited the pair for being “believers” in his candidacy, if “not necessarily supporters,” as he said on the show after he won the New Hampshire primary.

In a September GQ piece, Trump told writer Jason Zengerle how Scarborough called him after one of the primary debates to congratulate him: "He said, 'Congratulations, you have just become president! You killed everybody.’ And then I watched the show the next morning, and he didn't say that. I called him and asked him why. He said, 'I don't want people to know how good friends we are.'"

But Scarborough claims his behind-the-scenes conversations with major players at high levels of government are “nothing new,” pointing to similar relationships in Democratic administrations.

“This is nothing new for Mika and me,” he said. “We spoke regularly to Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod in the Obama White House, and we have always maintained good relations with congressional leaders and Cabinet secretaries. Most of them watch the show and call us if they have an issue they want to discuss.”

Ultimately, Scarborough said, the reason Trump still talks to him, and the reason he, Brzezinski and Halperin have faced so much criticism is that he and his crew recognized Trump’s path forward when others didn’t.

“Mika, Mark Halperin and I understand the resentment from some who were blind to the realities that shaped the 2016 election,” Scarborough said. “I understand why they are embarrassed and striking out at us. I guess we were about the only media figures to both aggressively attack Trump while predicting the possibility of his win. By election week, the media bias became so pronounced that merely suggesting Trump could win got us labeled by out-of-touch analysts as lap dogs. We were right. They were wrong.”

Alex Weprin contributed to this report.