The hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” opened Monday’s program with news that may have shocked most of their devoted viewers — that they met with President Trump.

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski made the announcement at the start of the morning news program, saying that they had traveled to Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Friday to “meet personally” with the President-elect to “restart communications.”

“Over the past week, Joe and I have heard from so many people. From political leaders to regular citizens deeply dismayed by several of President-elect Trump’s cabinet selections … and they are scared,” Ms. Brzezinski said. “Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally with President-elect Trump. It was the first time we have seen him in seven years.”

Mr. Scarborough took over their monologue to weigh in.

“We talked about a lot of issues, including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets. We talked about that a good bit,” he said. “It will come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show, has watched it over the past year or over the past decade, that we didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, and we told him so.”

“What we did agree on was to restart communications,” Ms. Brzezinski added.

The announcement of their meeting raised the anger of many, who took to social media to express their dismay.

“To those of you waking up at this hour and thinking of watching the rerun of the first hour of @morningjoe, this is what you are in for: @joescarborough‘s and 

@mikabrzezinski‘s betrayal of their colleagues, democracy, and us all. It is a disgusting show of obeisance in advance,” long-time media critic Jeff Jarvis wrote on Threads.

“MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump and agreed to ‘reset’ their relationship,” economist Stephen Geiger said in a post on X. “Once again… Democrats never actually thought Trump was Hitler or a fascist dictator. If you were propagandized, it’s ok. You got played.”

“So now, with the loss of millions of viewers, MSNBC is making these two move ever so slightly toward the middle? Not impressed with their sincerity! And their rabid fanbase will hate them for speaking to Trump,” said one user on X.

Even colleagues at MSNBC went public with their displeasure that the meeting took place.

“Normalizing Trump is a bad idea. Period.” Anchor Katie Phang said in a post on Threads.

The morning media power couple originally had a cordial relationship with Trump, but as he assumed office in 2016, the relationship turned tumultuous. Since then, the pair have been among some of the President’s harshest critics but said they wanted to take a new approach in their coverage of the incoming President and put aside their “deep concerns” about his actions.

“[Those issues] were not as important as the issues that moved them to send Donald Trump back to the White House with their vote,” Ms. Brzezinski said. “Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him.”

Mr. Scarborough chimed in again with his thoughts.

“Somebody close to Donald Trump told me this past weekend, this is a president who is not seeking re-election, so maybe, just maybe now could be time for both parties to get to work,” he said. “I don’t know. It seems to make sense for leaders of both parties to seek common ground, if it’s possible at all.”

“Don’t be mistaken,” Scarborough concluded, “We are not here to defend or normalize Donald Trump. “We are here to report on him and to hopefully provide you insights that are going to better equip all of us in understanding these deeply unsettling times.”