Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski's 'Workplace Meltdown': Morning Show Hosts Remarkable Number of Absences Left Abandoned Staff Members 'Scrambling' Before Network Rebrand
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski's lack of appearances on their show ruffled feathers.
Dec. 3 2025, Published 7:30 p.m. ET
The married Morning Joe co-host team has sent the network formally known as MSNBC into a panic.
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have been M.I.A. from their morning talk show – and insiders now claim the couple's increasingly high number of absences has sparked a "workplace meltdown" as the network scrambles to cover for them, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Brzeznski and Scarborough Vanish From 'Morning Joe'
Scarborough has missed 29 episodes of 'Morning Joe' from late May to November.
Prior to the network's rebrand to MS NOW, Scarborough and Brzezinski racked up quite a number of absences from Morning Joe.
Between May 27 and November 15, the married duo reportedly appeared together in just 70 of 124 episodes.
Scarborough couldn't be found for 29 episodes, and Brzezinski was absent from 41, which worked out to about one missed show every three days.
In July alone, Brzezinski missed two straight weeks of episodes.
Brzezinski was absent from 41 episodes of the morning news program.
In their absence, colleagues Jonathan Lemire, Willie Geist, and Katty Kay stepped up to anchor the morning news program.
While signing off on August 29th's edition of the show, Kay quipped, "I'm Katty Kay, in for Joe, Mika, and Willie. Everybody's off except me. I'm so sorry."
The pair typically hosts the program from a decked-out studio at their Jupiter, Florida, home. Given their extremely short work commute, many speculated whether the absences were due to one partner sleeping in while the other goes live on-air at 6 A.M.
'Chaos' Behind the Scenes
A senior producer said 'every day is scramble' amid the couple's absences.
In any case, the duo's inconsistent schedules were said to have "frustrated" staffers, many of whom have been working at the show for years, and led to "chaos" behind the scenes.
"There’s no leadership," a senior producer claimed to Hollywood insider Rob Shuter, who writes on Substack. "Every day is a scramble. Who’s hosting? What’s the tone? Who’s running the ship? No one knows."
"They have special deals, endless vacation time – but this summer went too far," a separate source claimed. "We're headed into an election year, and we're stuck with empty chairs."
After months of irregular appearances on their own show, Brzezinski and Scarborough swiftly changed their tune and began showing up to their home studio regularly, starting on November 12, mere days before parent company Comcast offloaded the network onto a new spin-off company, Versant.
Since then, they've clocked their longest consecutive streak of appearances since Memorial Day at three weeks and counting.
Meanwhile, Scarborough compared his network's new home to "a tech startup" and has teased the couple's plans to expand their personal brands.
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Scarborough Shades MS NOW Rebrand
Days before MSNBC was rebranded, the couple began showing back up to work on a routine basis.
Scarborough recently announced the couple will be expanding their Morning Joe franchise with an afternoon newsletter, dubbed The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe, as he threw shade at the MS NOW rebrand.
"I just wanted to build out the community ... so we're not just a 6-to-10 A.M. (ET) show that will then have viral clips living throughout the rest of the day," Scarborough said of the newsletter in an interview with Axios.
According to the report, Scarborough said he met with Versant CEO Mark Lazarus and MS NOW president Rebecca Kutler, and was encouraged to "be entrepreneurial ... Whatever you want to do, be creative, let's do it!"
"It's like a tech startup where they're saying: 'Throw s--- at the wall and see what sticks – take chances. Let's have fun with this,'" he quipped.
