There is something that must be said about Zbigniew Brzezinski and his daughter Mika’s invocation of him to justify her and Joe Scarborough’s decision to sit with “Hitler,” er, Trump at the Berghof Mar-a-Lago. Mika said, “My father often spoke with world leaders with whom he and the United States profoundly disagreed. That is a task shared by reporters and commentators alike.” 

Bullshit.

Zbigniew Brzezinski would never have recognized what his daughter did through a diplomatic lens. He would have recognized it as a capitulant act. He would have recognized it as an appeasement to strength and power at the cost of what’s right and decent. He would have recognized the fecklessness, weakness, arrogance, entitlement and suffocating determination to hang onto a privileged perch that so easily bends the knee and bows the head to a man like “Hitler,” er, Trump. He would have recognized perfectly that democracy collapses when public character fades to nothingness, and journalism becomes an amplifier of power as opposed to its skeptic.

He would have recognized the “Morning Joe” summit for exactly what it was: a kowtow to Donald Trump and an act of self-debasement, humiliation and epic grovelling that he would have rightly and mightily disdained.