The Sound Of Fear On Air

This morning, I had an unsettling experience.

I was invited onto MSNBC’s Morning Joe to talk from a studio in Washington, D.C., about an article I’d written on Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Before getting to the article, I was asked about the nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense—specifically about an NBC News report that his heavy drinking worried colleagues at Fox News and at the veterans organizations he’d headed. (A spokesman for the Trump transition told NBC, “These disgusting allegations are completely unfounded and false, and anyone peddling these defamatory lies to score political cheap shots is sickening.”)

I answered by reminding viewers of some history:

In 1989, President George H. W. Bush nominated John Tower, senator from Texas, for secretary of defense. Tower was a very considerable person, a real defense intellectual, someone who deeply understood defense, unlike the current nominee. It emerged that Tower had a drinking problem, and when he was drinking too much he would make himself a nuisance or worse to women around him. And for that reason, his nomination collapsed in 1989. You don’t want to think that our moral standards have declined so much that you can say: Let’s take all the drinking, all the sex-pesting, subtract any knowledge of defense, subtract any leadership, and there is your next secretary of defense for the 21st century.

I told this story in pungent terms. It’s cable TV, after all. And I introduced the discussion with a joke: “If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.”

At the next ad break, a producer spoke into my ear. He objected to my comments about Fox and warned me not to repeat them. I said something noncommittal and got another round of warning. After the break, I was asked a follow-up question on a different topic, about President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son. I did not revert to the earlier discussion, not because I had been warned, but because I had said my piece. I was then told that I was excused from the studio chair. Shortly afterward, co-host Mika Brzezinski read an apology for my remarks.

A little bit earlier in this block there was a comment made about Fox News, in our coverage about Pete Hegseth and the growing number of allegations about his behavior over the years and possible addiction to alcohol or issues with alcohol. The comment was a little too flippant for this moment that we’re in. We just want to make that comment as well. We want to make that clear. We have differences in coverage with Fox News, and that’s a good debate that we should have often, but right now I just want to say there’s a lot of good people who work at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth, and we will want to leave it at that.

She’s right, of course: There are good people at Fox News. But if NBC’s reporting—based on interviews with 10 current or former Fox employees—about Hegseth’s alcohol abuse is accurate, many of those same good people have failed to report publicly that their former colleague, appointed to lead the armed forces of the United States, was notorious in their own building for his drinking. That would be a startling and shameful shirking of responsibility on a matter of grave national importance. What’s the appropriate language to call it out?

I am a big admirer of the Morning Joe show and the commitment of all involved to bring well-informed political discussion to a national audience.

I recognize, too, that the prominence of the program has exposed the hosts and producers to extraordinary pressures and threats in the Trump era. Trump has spoken again and again of his determination to retaliate against unfriendly media. Shortly before leaving office, Trump amplified a conspiracy theory that Brzezinski’s co-host, Joe Scarborough, was a murderer. Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, has compiled an enemies list to target with investigations. Trump’s candidate to chair the FCC has speculated about stripping licenses from platforms that displease the new incoming administration. Interference with mergers and acquisitions to punish critics was a feature of Trump’s first administration. Now NBC is up for sale by Comcast, with the future of the liberal MSNBC network very much in question. The hosts of Morning Joe visited Mar-a-Lago in November to mend fences with Trump. They genuinely have a lot to worry about.

As for my own comments: You can decide for yourself whether I overstepped the proper limits of television discussion. But I also note that if I did misstep, well, my face was on the screen, my name was on the chyron, and anyone who took offense knows whom to blame.

It is a very ominous thing if our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with efforts to appease.

I write these words very aware that I’m probably saying goodbye forever to a television platform that I enjoy and from which I have benefited as both viewer and guest. I have been the recipient of personal kindnesses from the hosts that I have not forgotten.

I do not write to scold anyone; I write because fear is infectious. Let it spread, and it will paralyze us all.

The only antidote is courage. And that’s infectious, too.