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Joe Scarborough | Getty

MSNBC ad campaign touts new role for ‘Morning Joe’: The place for breaking news

A new ad campaign for MSNBC is reframing "Morning Joe" in a new way: as the place to get breaking news about what the incoming Trump administration has in the works.

One television commercial features images of “Morning Joe” with a narrator saying the show "has the inside track … getting the inside story before it breaks” as clips of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski run, saying “Joe was first to report” and “People very close to Donald Trump ...,” adding that the show reports "from Pennsylvania Avenue to Fifth Avenue, and every main street in between."

A print ad goes even further — a photo of Scarborough and Brzezinski with the words “Daily intelligence briefings happen here."

The show, which for nearly a decade has prided itself on being the TV home for the political and media elite up and down the Acela corridor, has been breaking news about the incoming administration with regularity in recent weeks.

As POLITICO previously reported, the show has a direct pipeline to President-elect Trump, whom the "Morning Joe" co-hosts have known for more than a decade.

The result of that relationship? A show that in the past wasn't typically known for breaking juicy tidbits and major news on future policy is now doing just that, from Trump’s stance on nuclear weapons to future appointments. And MSNBC is going all in on touting that relationship as part of a larger ad campaign.

Not everyone has been a fan of Scarborough and Brzezinski’s closeness to the Trumps (Brzezinski has also gone to Trump Tower to have coffee with Ivanka Trump). The two have been decried by some competitors and critics as “carrying water” for the incoming administration, a charge the hosts have denied, citing their frequent criticism of Trump and his policies.

Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.