Going off the record with Trump? That’s just kissing his ring.

There is no sound journalistic reason to go off the record with someone who has no filter.

There is no sound journalistic reason to go off the record with Donald Trump. With someone who already has no filter, there is nothing to be gained. It is purely an exercise in deference – in kissing the ring of a fascist.

In a whiny, defensive rant on today’s “Morning Joe” broadcast on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough depicted the pilgrimage he and his cohost made to Mar-a-Lago as a journalistic service to their audience. (Video link here.)

And without citing any sources, he insisted that the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other major outlets have similarly sought (or even partaken in) off-the-record sessions with Trump -- just not as transparently.

Scarborough spoke contemptuously about critics who asked “How dare they go see him after saying he was a fascist?”

“Well that’s exactly what the Washington Post is doing. That’s exactly what the Wall Street Journal is doing... You know what you call it? You call it their job,” Scarborough said.

(Cohost Mika Brzezinski asserted the New York Times and Atlantic were doing it as well.)

“You know why I do that? To get the read of the man,” Scarborough continued. “To get the read of the leader. To get the read of where the country is going.”

His voice raised, he continued: “So I can come back here and talk to you and let you know what the hell is going on. And give you context, insight and background.”

Journalists who come on the show do it, too, he insisted. “It’s what they do every day, they speak on background.”

I certainly hope that Scarborough and Brzezinski are wrong about the Times, the Post, and others. And it’s unclear if he meant they were seeking off-the-record comments from Trump. were actually prepared to send a delegation to Mar-a-Lago, or had already done so.

But the reality is that no self-respecting journalists should be going off-the-record with Trump, ever.

Why? Because he says everything that’s on his mind on the record already. (See my 2020 column, With Trump off his rocker, there’s no excuse to let him go off the record.)

Going off the record with a source is a compact and a sign of respect. You grant a source anonymity on the assumption that you will get valuable information in return. But Trump holds nothing back in public. Nothing he says off the record will be revelatory. Certainly nothing will be revelatory and true. Nothing will suddenly give you a better “read on the man.”

So what is it then? It’s bending the knee. It’s obedience.

This comes amid other warning signs of an overly deferential press:

• Washington Post owner and centibillionaire Jeff Bezos, in an interview at the New York Times’s glitzy Dealbook summit, saying he is “optimistic” about Trump’s second term, offering to help him abolish regulations. He also said he was "proud" of his decision to kill an editorial board endorsement of Kamala Harris, and called it "brave" because he anticipated blowback. (I'm damn sure he didn't anticipate a quarter of a million subscribers revolting.)

• Los Angeles Times owner and billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, according to very disturbing reporting by Oliver Darcy, getting MAGA-friendly, hiring lying GOP shill Scott Jennings onto the editorial board and threatening to put an AI-powered “bias meter” atop his own paper’s news stories, with a “button” letting the reader “get both sides of that exact same story.”

We want our news organizations to speak truth to power, not defer to it. These will be trying times. They must hold firm, and I’m afraid they won’t

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