Did Morning Joe Avoid Covering Trump’s Florida Residency Tax Dodge Because Scarborough Did the Same Thing?

President Donald Trump’s newly-declared Florida residency has been heavily covered on almost every MSNBC show in recent days, except Morning Joe. Hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski avoided covering the story — save for a brief comment — a decision that might have something to do with their own move to the tax haven state earlier this year.

Trump confirmed on Thursday that in September he changed his and First Lady Melania Trump’s official residency status from Trump Tower in New York to his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. In a tweet about his family’s relocation, the president complained about paying “millions of dollars in city, state and local taxes each year.”

It is not uncommon for billionaires and millionaires to declare residency in Florida, given that it is one of seven states in the U.S. with no income tax.

Two other wealthy New York celebrities who have taken advantage of this legal tax dodge include MSNBC’s husband and wife co-hosts Scarborough and Brzezinski.

Page Six reported in January that Morning Joe began broadcasting semi-regularly out of a home studio in Jupiter, FL, instead of Rockefeller Center where the program has typically been filmed. Scarborough changed his voter registration from Connecticut to Palm Beach County on Oct. 9, 2018, but the registration change alone is not enough to make him an official tax-exempt Floridian. The former Florida congressman is expected to spend 183 days out of the year in the state to maintain a permanent resident status, so the two created a second Morning Joe set in Palm Beach County — complete with Washington, D.C. backdrops of the White House and Capitol Building — to spend more time in their Jupiter home while still keeping up appearances.

Since the New York Times  broke the news on Thursday, MSNBC has aired more than 20 segments discussing Trump’s move to Florida, according to the news monitoring service TVEyes, but coverage of the president’s residency switch has noticeably been absent on Morning Joe, where, as of Monday, the hosts have yet to mention the reason for Trump’s move to Florida.

On Friday’s edition of Morning Joe, the Times headline on Trump’s move appeared on the program, along with commentary by Brzezinski about the president “making a move and saying goodbye to the Big Apple.” But those five seconds — in which she never mentioned Florida or the state’s income tax exempt status — were the extent of their coverage.

An MSNBC spokesman declined to comment.

Scarborough and Trump’s reasons for migrating south are not identical. A Times report on Thursday noted that, while the move was mainly about tax dodging, the president was also pushed to move to the so-called “winter White House” by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who infuriated Trump by filing a subpoena to get ahold of the his ever-elusive tax returns. (Moving to Florida is expected to have little impact on Vance’s subpoena efforts).

Scarborough, on the other hand, reportedly justified the move by voicing a desire to be closer to family, since he and his wife both have parents in Florida. As nice as it is to have aging family members living nearby, the additional half-million dollars Scarborough stands to save on his reported $8 million income is nice too.

The Morning Joe transition to a part-time home studio has caused production issues for the two, as Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote that the lack of a “formal set” means “a wide shot is out of the question.” He also noted that the two are often broadcasted via split-screens, despite “actually sitting a few feet away from each other.”

“People on the show say the multi-state production arrangement has caused some concern about its [effect] on the ‘chemistry’ of the panelists and the co-hosts,” Farhi added.

What you don’t see in these shots: Joe and Mika are actually sitting a few feet away from each other. But they each address their own camera rather than turning to speak to each other (because doing that would expose the fact that they’re sitting on a makeshift set).

— Paul Farhi (@farhip) January 24, 2019

Members of the Trump family have filed “declaration of domicile” forms claiming Palm Beach as their permanent residence, where the president has spent 99 days of his presidency.

After Trump tweeted that he has “been treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state” and that “few have been treated worse,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo fired back with a tweet of his own praising the president’s exit: “Good riddance. It’s not like Mr. Trump paid taxes here anyway. He’s all yours, Florida.”

….New York, and always will, but unfortunately, despite the fact that I pay millions of dollars in city, state and local taxes each year, I have been treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state. Few have been treated worse. I hated having to make….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2019