Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough criticized Glenn Greenwald on Monday for not answering David Gregory's controversial question.
Gregory hosted Greenwald, who worked with source Edward Snowden and broke the story of the NSA's top secret surveillance of millions of Verizon customers, on Sunday's "Meet the Press." The NBC News host asked the journalist why he shouldn't be prosecuted — a question that prompted Greenwald to take him to task.
"Why didn't you answer the question?" Mika Brzezinski said about Greenwald on Monday. "I thought that's what journalists did."
"It was a question and the correct answer to that question is, 'It's outrageous you would suggest i'm aiding and abetting, I'm not.'" Scarborough said. "But if he's just getting information and putting it in the newspaper that's one thing.' If he's a much bigger part of this story, Kathleen, that's quite another."
"We have to be careful," the Washington Post's Kathleen Parker cautioned. "You don't prosecute reporters for doing their job."
Scarborough agreed, but added, "I saw him on the set, you know, Mika asked a question. When people ask him questions, and he knocks their heads off. It seems, you know -- you can ask questions of people without them becoming --"
"I don't know what his larger role is except that he does seem very defensive of --" Parker said.
Scarborough clarified that he was "not speculating" what Greenwald's role has been. "But, you know, somebody asks me if I'm aiding and abetting an international fugitive, of course I'm not," he said.
"He's been defensive in the interviews I've seen which have been disappointing, having him on the show when he was here in person, having positive interviews with him," Scarborough added.
Greenwald appeared on "Morning Joe" earlier this month, after breaking his bombshell story. When Brzezinski wondered whether wiretaps and the reading of emails required more approval than Greenwald's story suggested, he accused her of using "White House talking points" that were "misleading and false."
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