Dear libs: MSNBC is not going to save us.

From Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources newsletter:

"Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally with president-elect Trump" on Friday, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski revealed at the top of Monday's show. In a seemingly scripted back-and-forth, Joe Scarborough said "we didn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues and we told him so." But "what we did agree on – was to restart communications," Brzezinski said, before suggesting that their behavior should be a model for others.

I'm pretty sure you can read "restart communications" as "we're going to be friendlier to Trump."

Stelter further notes that Fox & Friends celebrated this visit. I hope to have more on that in another post.

I don’t know what Joe and Mika were trying to accomplish. I do know that this fits with the Los Angeles Times owner bending the knee to Trump last week; Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn salivating over criminal charges for MSNBC; and Trump’s already-happening assault on the media and First Amendment. To put it another way, it looks a lot like lipstick on the pig of dangerous “anticipatory obedience” to authoritarianism.

My Crooks and Liars colleague, Ed Scarce, has more on what Joe and Mika had to say this morning.

Note that the lower-third banner on the screen grab from Scarce’s post reads, “covering Trump’s second term,” not “our conversation with Trump” or “We pledge honest, tough and fair coverage” or something like that.

So. what can you do? For starters, I highly recommend Indivisible’s new and revised guide.

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(Screen grab via Crooks and Liars)