Morning Joe Host Mika Brzezinski Pays Tribute to Late Father

 Posted on July 24, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  744 words  |  Martina Birk

“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski has paid tribute to her father, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who died Friday night at a hospital in Virginia. He was 89.

Mika Brzezinski hailed the man known as Chief to his family as “the most inspiring, loving and devoted father any girl could ever have.” She shared family pictures of her father and made mention of his love of sailing his boat to Baker Island in Maine.

“Chief loved making his family laugh. He loved Maine more than anything — where we hiked as a family, swam, played tennis and rode in his broken-down boat to the beautiful islands just off Northeast Harbor,” Brzezinski wrote on Instagram.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was a top advisor to President Jimmy Carter during the tumultuous late 1970s, when the administration was tested by the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and other global crises.

A native of Poland, Brzezinski’s family left Europe during the rise of fascism and settled in Canada. He worked as a professor at Columbia University before joining the State Department in 1966. He developed a relationship with Carter, then governor of Georgia, that led to his cabinet post after Carter won the White House in 1976.

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Brzezinski had long remained an active voice in foreign policy circles. He was a professor at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was a frequent commentator for ABC News and PBS.

Mika Brzezinski has been co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” since 2007. Before that she worked as a news anchor  for CBS News. She and co-host Joe Scarborough announced their engagement earlier this month.

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