Steve Schmidt has gone from MSNBC regular to critic and he joins us this week to express his utter disgust at Joe and Mika’s shameless decision to bend the knee to Donald Trump. The “Morning Joe” duo has gone from comparing Trump to Hitler to begging for a meeting in two weeks time to their audience’s utter disgust, a move Steve describes as cynical capitulation in a blistering rant. Add the network’s rating collapse to the news that Comcast is spinning MSNBC off into a new entity, and the whole enterprise may be on the verge of collapse.

We can expect to see many similar heel turns from mainstream media outlets, corporations, and the like as Trump returns to power and sets the nation’s political agenda for years to come. Staunch opponents of Trump will show themselves to be opportunistic, savvy readers of the financial and political landscape, as our conversation with Steve reveals. We get into this greater phenomenon of media’s allegiances to political figures — especially in the case of those switching sides from the Biden era to the Trump era — and what it tells us about our relationship to politics, the truth, and our leadership.

Thanks for tuning in. You can listen to this conversation as a podcast when it’s released tomorrow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more.