Morning Joe: Elizabeth Warren Should Do Fox News Town Hall Even Though Network Pushes Racism and Bigotry

The members of the Morning Joe crew just can’t make up their minds.

The hosts and panelists spent a chunk of their Wednesday morning equivocating on whether Sen. Elizabeth Warren made the right call in declining an invitation to participate in a Fox News town hall as she pursues the Democratic presidential nomination.

In announcing her decision, Warren called Fox “a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists” and condemned it as a malign force in American culture that “provides cover for the corruption that’s rotting our government and hollowing out our middle class.”

Joe Scarborough asked his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, asked if maybe Warren would still want to reach out to the viewers who might watch the more so-called “straight” reporters on Fox who don’t always toe the conservative party line.

Brzezinski took both sides of the issue. First she acknowledged that while there are good journalists working at Fox, “that doesn’t erase what’s going on there, which one could argue is exactly as Elizabeth Warren describes it, a direct connection from a corrupt president who is racist, to megaphones, to people who parrot it.”

But, she added, making the opposing argument, “a presidential candidate should be able to walk into any situation, any fire, and have the confidence to put it out by spreading the democratic values and his or her beliefs.”

What this conversation misses is that Warren is in fact talking to people who might watch Fox. Politico reported last weekend that she earned praise from Trump voters in West Virginia after a trip to a rural area devastated by the opioid crisis. And, as the piece noted, she wasn’t necessarily looking for votes in the state that will likely not decide the Democratic nominee or the presidential election. But the voters appreciated her showing up to talk to them about a serious issue all the same.

Warren earned this goodwill without helping Fox News pad its bottom line by selling ads, the lifeblood of a news network, during a primetime town hall. At the same time, she likely earned points with Democratic voters who hate Fox for the poisonous views it would inject into the nation’s bloodstream during the other 23 hours of the day on which Warren would have appeared.

Brzezinski, Scarborough and the rest of the Morning Joe crew can’t see beyond the idea that Warren is passing up an opportunity to talk to a wide audience of voters who would probably be distracted when President Trump tweets “HRRRR DRRRR POCAHONTAS” the minute the credits roll on the town hall.

Watch the clip up top, via MSNBC.