Mika Brzezinski: I Was An ‘Idiot’ Signing My First ‘Morning Joe’ Contract
In this bonus episode of The New Abnormal, Mika tells her firing story, why there should be a ‘70 Over 70’ list for women, and her biggest contract regret.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty
Mika Brzezinski’s firing from CBS in 2006 was a total surprise. Like, she was completely caught off guard.
“I still, I still wake up going, why did that happen? Like I was so shocked,” she tells The New Abnormal host Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal.
She remembers it clearly. She walked into a one-on-one meeting with former CBS president Sean McManus thinking she was going to pitch a new story idea or even get promoted. But then, she heard the words “it’s not working out.”
“And I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s not working out. Like, I’m getting fired?’ And I remember the blood running out of every body part I could feel and I asked him why,” a question he did not have an answer for, she tells Molly.
After the meeting, she cried on the street and called her dad immediately, who told her that this was going to be the best thing to ever happen to her—and he was right. After a year of no solid jobs and turning down a big PR job, she called MSNBC and asked to do literally anything.
She got a gig doing freelance readings and cut-ins overnight, which eventually led to Morning Joe. But as she describes in her book, Know Your Value, she did not, in fact, know her value. In fact, when they offered her a contract, she pretty much agreed immediately, only to find out her colleagues took a different approach.
“I grabbed it, grabbed it away from the person and signed it. Well, these guys held out for six months and waited,” she said. Her co-host and husband, Joe Scarborough, told them that he could get higher ratings than the last person and made that the case for earning more money.
“[I was] such an idiot,” she says. But it’s the reason she now advocates for women to know their worth: “Guys, they negotiate the moon for themselves and women, we come into it, like, ‘I’m hoping you’ll like me, but maybe you won’t.’”
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