NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 28: Joe Scarborough speaks at the Global Citizen NOW Summit at The Glasshouse on April 28, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for Global Citizen)
The former politician earns an estimated annual salary of $8 million, per Celebrity Net Worth.
How Does Joe Scarborough Make Money?
Joe is perhaps best known for cohosting Morning Joe alongside his wife, Mika Brzezinski, and Today’s Willie Geist. They first began cohosting the show in 2007, bringing in a rotating panel of political commentators and celebrity guests onto the broadcast to discuss worldly matters. The trio has been able to maintain their place in the morning TV lineup for 18 years, lining their pockets with money from their work on the show.
In January 2025, Joe explained that he was hoping to make some big changes on the show, starting with the celebrity guests.
“For years, I have wanted us to push back and go more into the original concept of Morning Joe, which was like, yes, politics and foreign policy and the economy, but also music and film and Broadway,” the TV host told The Hollywood Reporterat the time.
“We’ve wanted to do it. And in 2022 everything was just so hot. I knew that if I wanted to actually interview artists and actors and directors, people that I’ve always loved, whether it’s Christopher Nolan or Al Pacino, that I needed to create a different space for it,” Joe continued. “So we originally created a primetime show where we would do it [Joe Scarborough Presents], and we would interview these people and pop culture figures and influential artists. But then after a while, I said, wait, this stuff is so good. I don’t want to have Christopher Nolan on at eight o’clock at night.”
Joe went on to say that he wanted his Morning Joe family “to be able to hear Christopher Nolan and Robert Downey Jr. and all the Oppenheimer people.”
“I wanted that in the morning,” he continued. “So, we moved it back to the morning, and we’ve just focused on it a lot more.”
NEW YORK - APRIL 7: "EXCLUSIVE" Joe Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski host the "Morning Joe" show on MSNBC on April 7, 2009 in New York City. Scarborough is currently the host of Morning Joe on MSNBC, and had previously hosted Scarborough Country on the same channel. Scarborough served in the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001 as a Republican from the 1st district of Florida. (Photo by Charles Ommanney/Getty Images)Charles Ommanney/Getty Images
Joe Scarborough’s Career Outside of ‘Morning Joe’
Prior to Morning Joe, he had a political career when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Florida’s 1st congressional district, where he served from 1995 to 2001. The Georgia native also hosted the show Scarborough Country from 2003 to 2007.
Joe also authored multiple books, including Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization.
In addition to his career in media and politics, Joe is a musician. He released his debut EP, Mystified, in 2017.
“Music has always been the most important thing in my life,” Joe, who is a dad to four kids from his previous marriages, told Louisville Public Media in August 2017.
Joe said that eventually, he decided to publicly release his music after years of keeping it under wraps.
“I was always a studio rat, recording in private, but I finally just decided to take a jump and see how it went,” the political commentator explained.