Whether you make the questionable decision to subject yourself to The Swamp’s favorite morning show in Morning Joe or are somewhat familiar with the chatfest, Willie Geist would hopefully come to mind as an amicable, steady presence and more likely to be fair-‘n-balanced than love birds Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
Back in 2008, NewsBusters even caught Willie “campaigning” for John McCain on Manhattan’s ultra-liberal West Side –albeit as something of a stunt to record local reaction.
That said, Geist isn’t immune from having a turn in the barrel.
On Friday, the subject was Trump lawyer John Eastman’s Tuesday and Wednesday appearance on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News Channel show, in the course of which, the Morning Joe panel asserted that he had made admissions that could be damaging in his criminal trial regarding J6.
Commenting on that and related matters, Willie had this exchange with regular panelist and liberal journalist Sam Stein of Politico:
STEIN: If I could, I want to go back to one point about Eastman, which I think is a valid point here. You know, why is he going on Fox News? Why is he creating more problems for himself? I think this is sort of the underlying issue here that’s happened, which is, previously obscure lawyers like John Eastman, you know, yes, they found an immense amount of legal problems from their actions leading up to the 2020 elections and the certification. They’ve also found a fair bit of celebrity. John Eastman is now a celebrity on the right. He goes to confabs and conferences. He’s hailed as a hero in certain quarters of the conservative movement. And so, there is an impulse that he is trying to resist, not very well, to go out and be celebrated. Go out and do TV hits on Fox News. And I think that impulse is problematic, ultimately, for these types of figures, because they’re going to lead them to say things like he did on Laura Ingraham’s show.
GEIST: Hmm. It’s a good point. And you could say the same about Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell during the 2020 election.
STEIN: Right.
GEIST: Why were they doing it? Relevance! They were on TV. People were talking about them. Something they crave.
If Trump team members make TV appearances because they “crave” attention, what does it say about Geist and Stein that they chose to make appearing on TV their career? And given that Morning Joe is the table-setting show for D.C. elites!
Take Geist, for example. His own Wikipedia page cited at least eight different gigs on NBC/MSNBC, making him one of the most omnipresent people in television:
He is co-anchor of MSNBC’s Morning Joe and anchor of Sunday Today with Willie Geist. Geist also frequently serves as a fill-in anchor on both the weekday edition and the Saturday edition of Today. Geist is a correspondent for NBC News and NBC Sports, hosting and contributing to NBC’s Olympic coverage. Geist has hosted the Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks and Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting on NBC.
So, what does Willie “crave,” hmm? It sure ain’t anonymity!
For that matter, Sam Stein, who has gigs at both MSNBC and Politico, is no shrinking violet himself!
This case of the pot calling the kettle black was sponsored in part by Sling, Consumer Cellular, and Google.