MSNBC’s Hayes, Maddow Crack Each Other Up Over Agreement to Not Cover the Elephant in the Room…

Cable news figures must always strive to exercise proper judgment to ensure that what they show viewers is appropriate.

On Monday, the country’s media ecosystem received a shocking reminder of that responsibility — and sparked a dual giggling fit at the nightly handoff between MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow.

As Hayes wrapped up his 8:00 p.m. show, he passed the baton to his 9:00 p.m. successor, who then immediately alluded to an earlier conversation the pair had earlier in the day. The subject of the conversation went explicitly unmentioned, but almost assuredly was in reference to a now-infamous Zoom call by Jeffrey Toobin that went very much awry.

“Good evening, Chris. Thank you so much, and thank you for your counsel over the course of today as  work day…” she began, as Hayes suddenly broke out laughing and dropped his head in reaction. “It was such a weird day today.”

After rubbing his eyes in exasperation, Hayes composed himself and then sarcastically replied: “I’m always happy to have those high-level editorial discussions with you about the most important stories in our world.”

“Let us never speak of this publicly again,” a barely-holding-it-together Maddow said, amidst much awkward shuffling of papers. “Thank you very much, my friend.”

“It pays to have colleagues who share a sense of both the absurdity of life and the responsibility of what actually should be on television,” she added, still on the edge of cracking up again. “And it really pays to be able to talk to those colleagues during the course of the day like today.”

Watch the video above, via MSBNC.