'Morning Joe' Was Pulled From the MSNBC Schedule Following the Trump Shooting

For well over a decade, Morning Joe has been a fixture in the lives of many political junkies. Reports suggest that it is the president's favorite morning news show, but on July 15, it was off the air on MSNBC.

Following its absence from MSNBC, many wanted to know what had happened to the show. Here's what we know about why it was off the air on July 15, and what the hosts had to say about that decision when they returned to their show on July 16.

Morning Joe was pulled off the air on July 15 in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on July 13. CNN reported that the show had been pulled because NBC wanted to avoid an “inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole” when discussing the assassination attempt, which the show obviously would have had they been on the air.

Instead, MSNBC aired reporter coverage of the assassination attempt and its aftermath on a day that was busy with other news stories as well. Morning Joe returned to its regular slot on July 16, and the hosts addressed their absence the previous day at the top of the show. Given that they were off unexpectedly, some also wondered whether the hosts were about the be fired.

The cast was not fired, although this incident does suggest that the higher ups at NBC are concerned about the show's ability to cover breaking news that is sensitive in nature.

When they returned on July 16, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski said they were "surprised" and "disappointed" by the decision and also threatened to leave the network if it ever happened again.

“Next time we are told there will be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs,” Joe said. “And the news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show.”

Joe added that he was told by NBC that there would be an NBC news feed in "Breaking News" mode across all NBC channels all day Monday, but that did not come to pass. Andrea Mitchell and Chris Jansing appeared for their regular shows on the network, and the Today show also aired.

“If we had known that there wasn’t going to be the one news feed from NBC News across all NBC News channels … we obviously would have been in yesterday morning,” Joe said.

“Our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn’t happen, but it didn’t happen," he added.

For her part, Mika described the show as “the place where you can go to have the hard conversations in a civil way.”

Now that the show is back on the air, it seems they're ready to return to those hard conversations, although the hosts were definitely miffed at their treatment by the network.