In response to President Donald Trump’s derogatory insults on Twitter, the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” addressed the president’s lack of decency and integrity on Friday while accusing the White House of using a tabloid publication to stalk and harass their family unless they personally apologized to Trump. Although a spokesman for the National Enquirer and the president deny the accusations, former U.S. Congressman Joe Scarborough has asserted that he possesses text messages and phone records from Trump’s aides, confirming his allegations.
On Thursday, the president wrote on Twitter, “I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe came…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”
In a Washington Post op-ed published on Friday morning, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough responded, “President Trump launched personal attacks against us Thursday, but our concerns about his unmoored behavior go far beyond the personal. America’s leaders and allies are asking themselves yet again whether this man is fit to be president. We have our doubts, but we are both certain that the man is not mentally equipped to continue watching our show, ‘Morning Joe.’”
Besides losing respect in the eyes of foreign leaders, Trump immediately received a deluge of condemnation from U.S. Democrats and Republicans who could no longer remain silent. GOP Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey, Lindsey Graham, and many others publicly took a stand against the president’s sophomoric actions on Twitter while calling for him to stop verbally assaulting women.
“I’m just embarrassed…I mean, ‘embarrassed’ isn’t the right word. I just regret it,” Sen. John McCain told MSNBC. “It doesn’t astonish me because it isn’t the first time he has attacked various people that he has disagreement with. But so, I’m not ‘surprised,’ I’m disappointed.”
Given Trump’s history of threatening and degrading female journalists, McCain remains correct in his assessment that the president’s recent behavior should not come as a surprise to anyone. During the presidential campaign last year, Trump threatened NBC reporter Katy Tur at his rallies and insinuated that Megyn Kelly had been menstruating during the debates.
In December 2005, Trump allegedly assaulted People reporter Natasha Stoynoff during an interview at Mar-a-Lago, while Melania was out of the room. In addition to numerous allegations of sexual assault against women, Trump repeatedly attacked Rosie O’Donnell on Twitter for years.
Despite the fact that Melania Trump vowed to fight against cyber-bullying as First Lady, she has not taken a single action to prevent her husband from failing to do his job while belittling other women online. In Ivanka Trump’s own words: “I’m complicit.”
On Friday, Brzezinski and Scarborough accused the National Enquirer of harassing Brzezinski’s children and stalking their family, while Trump’s aides threatened that the tabloid would run a negative story about them unless Scarborough personally called the president to apologize for criticizing him. Both Trump and the National Enquirer denied these allegations.
In a statement from the National Enquirer’s publisher, a spokesman for American Media Inc. wrote, “At no time did we threaten either Joe or Mika or their children in connection with our reporting on the story. We have no knowledge of any discussions between the White House and Joe and Mika about our story, and absolutely no involvement in those discussions.”
On Friday, the president tweeted, “Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show”
“Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records. Also, those records show I haven’t spoken with you in many months,” Scarborough responded on Twitter. “Why do you keep lying about things that are so easily disproven? What is wrong with you?”
Besides endorsing Trump for president and allowing the then-presidential candidate to write several articles for the tabloid, the National Enquirer also launched several false accusations against his political rivals. While sharing a close friendship with Enquirer chief executive David Pecker, Trump garnered populist support last year as the Enquirer published unsubstantiated stories accusing Ben Carson of crippling his patients, Hillary Clinton on her deathbed, Jeb Bush’s cocaine habit, and Ted Cruz’s father involved in the assassination of JFK.
“My father just passed away. My mother had two heart attacks. My daughter just lost a friend. Those are the things I’m really worried about,” Brzezinski stated on Friday’s ‘Morning Joe.’ “Those are the things that really deeply impact me, and you know, leave me thinking about at night, and hurting and worrying and thinking about the future. The president’s tweets, whether they’re personally aimed at me or aimed at me in some way, that doesn’t bother me one bit. It does worry me about the country.”
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