Mika Brzezinski Biography
Mika Brzezinski is a talk show host, political commentator, and author from the United States. She currently co-hosts Morning Joe, a weekday morning broadcast show on MSNBC, and previously worked as a CBS News correspondent, where she reported from Ground Zero during the September 11 attacks. In 2007, she joined MSNBC as an occasional anchor and later became co-host of Morning Joe alongside Joe Scarborough.
Brzezinski is a visiting fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics, and her primary political interest is in advocating for wage equality for women. She has authored three books, including two on her career as a journalist and one on food addiction.
Born to diplomat and political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson and as the National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Mika Brzezinski has followed in her father’s footsteps in her work in politics and media.
As an assistant at ABC ‘s World News This Morning in 1990, Brzezinski began her career in journalism. A year later, in Hartford, Connecticut, she relocated to Tribune-owned Fox affiliate WTIC-TV / WTIC-DT. There, she progressed from editor of assignments and features to reporter of overall assignments.
She joined CBS affiliate WFSB-TV / WFSB-DT in Hartford in 1992 and rose rapidly through the ranks to become its 1995 weekday morning anchor. She left that job in 1997 to join CBS News, where she worked as a reporter and anchor for the news program Overnight Up to the Minute. Brzezinski started a brief hiatus from CBS News in 2001, during which she worked with co-anchors Gina Gaston and Ashleigh Banfield for rival MSNBC on the weekday afternoon show, HomePage. The trio was described by Entertainment Weekly as’ the Powerpuff Girls of journalism.’
Mika Brzezinski Age
Brzezinski was born on 2 May 1967 in New York, New York, United States. She is 56 years old as of 2023.
Mika Brzezinski Family | Mika Brzezinski Father
She is the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish-born foreign policy expert and former National Security Advisor, and Emilie Anna Benešová, a Swiss-born sculptor. She has two siblings; Her brother, Mark Brzezinski, is an American diplomat who previously worked as the United States Ambassador to Sweden from 2011 to 2015. Her second brother is military expert Ian Brzezinski.
Her mum, of Czech origin, is the grand-niece of former President Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia. When she was born, her father was teaching at Columbia University; the family moved to McLean, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., in late 1976, when newly elected President Jimmy Carter named Zbigniew as National Security Advisor. She is the first cousin of Matthew Brzezinski, an author.
Mika Brzezinski Husband | Mika Brzezinski Children(Daughters)
She has been married twice. She was first married to James Patrick, a TV news reporter working for WABC-TV. The couple met when they were both working at WTIC-TV and married on October 23, 1993. They have two daughters, Emilie and Carlie Hoffer. Hoffer and Brzezinski divorced in 2016 amidst allegations of an affair between Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. She is now married to Charles Joseph Scarborough, the former United States Representative now the cable news host currently the co-host of Morning Joe on MSNBC. The couple engaged in 2017 and married on November 24, 2018, in Washington, D.C.
Mika Brzezinski Education
Brzezinski attended and then enrolled at Georgetown University at the Madeira School. She moved to Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts during her junior year and graduated in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.
Mika Brzezinski Net Worth
Brzezinski has an estimated net worth of $20 million dollars. She has earned her fortune through her career as a television host and journalist.
Mika Brzezinski Salary
She earns $8 million per year on Morning Joe.
Mika Brzezinski MSNBC
On January 26, 2007, Brzezinski returned to MSNBC, doing the “Up to the Minute” evening news updates. Then, during the week, she worked on primetime newsbreaks. She has also submitted occasional reports for NBC Nightly News and appeared on Weekend Today as an occasional anchor. On the eve of the renewal option, Brzezinski resigned from both shows, said Brzezinski, when Scarborough picked her to co-host Morning Joe. Brzezinski has served as a co-host and newsreader on MSNBC’s Morning Joe morning program alongside Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist since the program’s inception.
Mika Brzezinski Campaign
Brzezinski declined to read a story about Paris Hilton’s release from prison on June 26, 2007, at the beginning of Morning Joe. One hour later, her producer Andy Jones pushed the story as the lead again during another news break segment, rating it over Indiana’s Republican Senator Richard Lugar’s break with President Bush over the Iraq War, which Brzezinski found more significant.
She threatened to set the story’s script on fire on the air after many derogatory comments from host Scarborough but was physically stopped by co-host Geist from doing so. “She then ripped up the document, and an hour later got up and ran another copy of the script through a paper shredder retrieved from the office of Dan Abrams. The incident was rapidly popularized on the Internet, and Brzezinski received massive volumes of fan mail in the days that followed to help her on-air protest as a statement on the conflict between” hard news “and” entertainment news.
Similarly, she objected to on-air pressure to report on Lindsay Lohan and Levi Johnston on July 7, 2010. Geist and Pat Buchanan eventually published the stories with the title, then popularized, “News You Can’t Use.”
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Erik Wemple of The Washington Post criticized Brzezinski and co-host Scarborough for frequent telephone interviews with Donald Trump, while much of the coverage of Morning Joe was supportive of Trump’s campaign.
Mika Brzezinski Books
Three books were written by Brzezinski, both of which were published by Weinstein Books. A memoir published in January 2010 was her first book, All Things at Once.
Published in 2011, Knowing Your Value: Women, Money, and Getting What You’re Worth, addresses women and financial negotiations. This involves wage and compensation plan negotiation tips. This was revised, revamped, and released as Know Your Value in 2018. In 2012, her third novel, Obsessed: America’s Food Addiction and My Own, was published.