It’s a tough world for accused sexual predators.
MSNBC president Phil Griffin intervened personally to put an end to disgraced journalist Mark Halperin’s rehabilitation collaboration with the hosts of Morning Joe, leaving the accused predator reportedly furious with the network’s chief.
Halperin was so upset that Griffin put the kibosh on his public relations team up with Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough that the former big-shot journalist threatened the cable news chief in a recent phone call, according to the Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani.
“The conversation earlier this year became acrimonious, with Halperin dishing up vague threats against his former boss,” Tani reports, citing “multiple sources.”
The same sources also say the phone conversation left Griffin “furious” and unlikely to take “Halperin’s calls in the future.”
Scarborough and Brzezinski tried earlier this year to collaborate with Halperin in “an online-only MSNBC broadcast analyzing the 2018 midterm elections,” the Daily Beast reports. However, as soon as network executives learned of the collaboration, they shut it down in a hot second.
“The failed scheme caused consternation within the building — ‘Everybody was going ‘WTF,’” an insider told Tani.
Griffin’s decision to bar his staff from aiding in the rehabilitation of an accused sexual predator is what reportedly led to Halperin’s angry phone call.
A victim alleges that in the late 1990s, Halperin masturbated in front of her when they were colleagues at ABC News. Another victim alleges that Halperin once “put both hands on” her arms and threw her “against the window” of a restaurant. “My head banged against the window hard, in a way I thought people inside were going to think something terrible had happened to me,” the victim recalled. There are additional allegations of unwanted kissing and groping. A few victims claim Halperin “[pressed] an erection against their bodies while he was clothed.” Some claim he even “propositioned” them. He put “his penis, on my shoulder,” one woman alleges.
Halperin’s failed attempt to leverage his relationship with the hosts of Morning Joe marks the latest in a larger strategy to weasel his way back into political journalism. He has already dipped his toes into the podcast circuit, including an appearance on SiriusXM radio host Michael Smerconish’s show, during which Halperin said of the accusations leveled against him: “I wasn’t a perfect person when I made these mistakes. I’m not a perfect person now. I’m happy to be judged by perfect people.”
Halperin has also authored a new political “insider” book, titled How to Beat Trump: America’s Top Political Strategists on What It Will Take. In writing the supposed “inside” look into D.C. politics, Halperin collaborated with 75 Democratic strategists and powerbrokers, many of whom have already apologized for helping him to try to ease his way back into political punditry.
And that is really the only good takeaway from Halperin’s efforts to snake his way back to the top: That despite being aided by complicit friends in both political and media circles, his attempts to sneak back into political journalism have proven unsuccessful.
