Nikki Haley says 'Morning Joe' hosts met Trump for ratings

Former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley suggested that Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, co-hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” had met with President-elect Trump at Mar-a-Lago as a ploy to maintaining ratings.

"Let’s be clear, Joe and Mika didn’t suddenly see the light, they saw their ratings," Haley wrote on the social platform X on Monday. "They realized they needed Trump for their survival."

Scarborough and Brzezinski announced to the show's audience Monday they had met with Trump in Florida late last week to "reopen communications" with the incoming president's team.

They had not had a face-to-face meeting with the former president in seven years, they said, while Trump in a separate interview with Fox News said such a meeting should have happened "long ago."

“In this meeting, he was upbeat, cheerful and he seemed interested in finding common ground on some of the most divisive issues,” Brzezinski said of the conversation. "For those asking why we would go speak with the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us ... I guess I would ask back, ‘Why wouldn’t we?'"

MSNBC has seen a decline in ratings since Election Day, Nielsen Media Research shows.

Cable news channels more generally saw a spike in ratings during Trump's first term in office, though overall cable news viewership has declined steadily in recent years due to widespread cord-cutting and a push by more media companies toward streaming.

Scarborough and Brzezinski during Trump's time in public life have been among his most vocal critics, but this week pledged to cover the incoming president fairly and honestly.

“Don’t be mistaken: We’re not here to defend or normalize Donald Trump,” Scarborough said Monday. “We’re here to report on him and to hopefully provide you insights and better equip all of us to understand these deeply unsettling times.”