“Morning Joe” cohost Mika Brzezinski monologued for nearly three minutes before punting to her panelists on Friday while discussing the “fiery” testimony of Fulton County DA Fani Willis — testimony, the MSNBC host suggested, where she “set herself up for a lot of criticism.”
“But I think that this is a woman who doesn’t give a damn about that,” Brzezinski concluded.
The analysis came one day after Willis testified on her own behalf during the first day of hearings for the investigation into her affair with attorney Nathan Wade. She hired Wade to oversee the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump and his allies.
Trump codefendant Michael Roman accused Willis of benefiting financially from her romantic relationship with Wade, which Roman alleges began before Wade was hired in 2021 — despite testimony from both parties that their affair began in 2022. Critics have used the relationship to question Willis’ and Wade’s impartiality as lead investigators into the former president’s alleged misconduct.
Willis’ testimony on Thursday was righteous and angry, direct, confident and, by many accounts, surprising. Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” even spotlighted a body language expert who expressed admiration for Willis’ confidence.
“It’s so interesting because you can definitely get from her testimony that she was angry for a number of reasons, and many of them, she didn’t bring up,” Brzezinski said Friday, emphasizing that the prosecution continuously lied about Willis’ personal life.
“Obviously, she doesn’t like being lied about. She obviously doesn’t like having her personal life just dragged out into the open and also lied about,” Brzezinski said. “She mentioned several times in her testimony that she has had to move a lot because of death threats, even before the election trial began, because of other trials she has presided over. I mean, this has been a tough job for her.”
The MSNBC host then railed against the proceedings as a “sideshow” meant to “delay the election interference case.”
“This is her point of view. She was just — you know what? — absolutely P.O.’d and got up on the stand, because she was like, ‘Dammit, I’m just going to have to tell my own story to these people.’
“Let’s talk about these people: The Trump attorneys seemed bumbling, they seemed unprepared, they seemed completely surprised that she took the stand and had absolutely nothing prepared for her,” the host continued. “They kept asking her the same questions over and over again, and they would talk about her cash, the cash that she kept in her home.
“And let’s talk about where she lived,” Brzezinski added. “She couldn’t live in her home. She couldn’t live in her home because this election interference trial has caused a danger to her life. So if you’re wondering why she’s angry, is that this has led to such an upheaval in her life in so many different ways to serve, and to try and take this case to fruition, and then to have this happen, that would cause someone to be very, very angry.”
The “Morning Joe” host then seemed to realize that she’d been talking for a while while a group of panelists waited, because she teased, “I know, I’m going to get to a question.”
“But I just want to point out,” she continued, “you know it’s bad when you turn on Fox News, and they start talking about her demeanor, her behavior, her looks. I mean, it shows that there’s probably a problem with the case that they think that they have against her. I thought she was fiery, I thought that she said important things. I thought that she set herself up for a lot of criticism, but I think that this is a woman who doesn’t give a damn about that.”
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment in the video above.
