‘Morning Joe’ hosts back suspension of Mark Halperin

MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski addressed the mounting allegations of sexual harassment against contributor Mark Halperin on “Morning Joe” on Friday, telling viewers that the show supports NBC News’s decision to suspend him.

Brzezinski said that Halperin is a “friend” of the show, but added that the hosts agreed with the decision of NBC executives to remove Halperin as a contributor for NBC and MSNBC.

“Our hearts break for Mark and his family, because he is our friend. But we fully support NBC’s decision here,” Brzezinksi said to the camera.

“We want to know more about these disturbing allegations,” she added. “We want to know the stories. We need to know what happened. And we’re not going to avoid the story just because he is our friend.”

Reports emerged earlier this week that Halperin had been accused of sexual harassment by at least five women during his time at ABC News in the early 2000s.

He is a longtime contributor to “Morning Joe,” and was co-authoring a book with writing partner John Heilemann about the 2016 election. Penguin Press and HBO announced Thursday that plans to publish the book and produce a miniseries based on it have been canceled.

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Brzezinski called the fallout from the downfall of film mogul Harvey Weinstein over similar allegations a “pivotal moment” for the media, and said that she’d been in the business long enough not to doubt Halperin’s accusers.

“I feel their pain and understand the difficult position they were in,” she said. “Because I have been through enough in this business to know what I hear. We are at a pivotal moment in history where unacceptable harassing behavior toward women will no longer be swept under the rug.”

Brzezinski’s comments come hours after a former researcher who worked with Halperin became the latest to come forward with sexual harassment allegations. In an article in The Washington Post, Dianna Goldberg, who now goes by Dianna May, says Halperin pressured her to sit on his lap while in a private meeting in his office.

“I didn’t know what to do,” May, who has since left the industry, told the newspaper. “He was important. He wasn’t my superior, but he was certainly in a superior position to mine. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know how to at the time. I knew it was wrong.”

“It was gross,” she added. “He’s gross. He’s gross.”