Jupiter, Florida - The hosts of the MSNBC show Morning Joe fired back with a lengthy rant after a journalist implied that they were afraid of president-elect Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski invited political commentator David Frum to discuss Trump nominating Fox News host Pete Hegseth as his secretary of defense.

At one point, Frum made a joke about Hegseth's alleged drinking problems, stating, "If you're too drunk for Fox News, you're very, very drunk indeed."

For some reason, the joke didn't go over well with the show's producers, and Brzezinski issued a bizarre on-air apology, arguing the joke was "a little too flippant."

Marjorie Taylor Greene Marjorie Taylor Greene ignites effort to make Elon Musk Speaker of the House

Frum went on to publish an article with The Atlantic later that day, suggesting that fear of Trump may have led to the apology.

"It is a very ominous thing if our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with efforts to appease," Frum wrote.

On Thursday morning's episode, the hosts addressed Frum's follow-up, with Scarborough describing it as an "outrageously stupid, immature" article "that lied time and time again."

He went on to repeatedly insist that he is "not fearful of leadership," adding, "I'll do my show the way I want to do my show!"

Days after Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Scarborough and Brzezinski revealed on their show that they had traveled to the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida for a closed-door meeting.

The two pitched it as an attempt to bury the hatchet with him, as they spent much of the race heavily criticizing Trump, calling him a fascist, and comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

Unfortunately, their viewers were not impressed with the apparent olive branch to Trump, and the show's ratings have dropped dramatically since.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Marjorie Taylor Greene angrily slams Madison school shooter: "What a pathetic way to go out"

Some have argued that the hosts met with Trump out of their own self-interest, as he and his allies have threatened to go after journalists they don't like during his term.

Others condemned the Morning Joe hosts for normalizing Trump's rhetoric and behavior, and the topic has sparked heavy debate about how reporters should handle what many expect to be a hectic second Trump term.

During Thursday's episode, Scarborough and Brzezinski again defended the Mar-a-Lago meeting, arguing that they were getting unfair backlash for something journalists do all the time.