MSNBC’s Morning Joe viewers are slamming the show’s hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough for passing off their post-Thanksgiving show as a live broadcast.
Viewers of the show are expressing their displeasure after a show executive confirmed that the show had been taped on Wednesday, the Daily Mail reported.
A long-time viewer of the program first noticed the show was not live when a story broke Friday afternoon about an ISIS attack on an Egyptian mosque that killed 305 people.
The news ticker referenced the attack, but the hosts did not mention it. Instead, Brzezinski and Scarborough spoke about Thanksgiving and President Trump’s shortcomings in the White House.
“The day after Thanksgiving, woo! I’m stuffed!” Brzezinski said, opening the show.
“Yeah, that was a great Thanksgiving,” Scarborough responded.
After multiple viewers pointed out the discrepancy in the show’s breaking news coverage, a show executive revealed the truth.
“There was no intention to trick viewers,” an MSNBC executive told the Washington Post. “Would it have helped if there was a disclaimer? Maybe. But that’s not typically done.”
For many viewers, the explanation was not good enough to ease their concerns.
“If you weren’t trying to deceive their viewers why did they need to pretend it was Friday and Thanksgiving had already passed?” one Twitter user wrote.
“This show is so stupid. Why fake what day you record your show?” another Twitter user quipped.
One person, who asked not to be identified, complained to the Post that Morning Joe was “lying” to its viewers about the news they broadcast.
“I was quite flabbergasted by the way they were so deceptive about this … especially when they are always so quick to castigate lying [or] deception they attribute to others,” the person told the Post.
Instead of going to the show taping, Scarborough posted a picture on Twitter of the Turkey Bowl football game in which he took part:
Scarborough responded to his critics Saturday evening on Twitter, alleging that the author of the Washington Post story about the pre-taped show is promoting “fake news” for citing one anonymous source in its report:
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