Trump refuses to budge over Scarborough conspiracy theory, calls death of his former staffer 'very suspicious'
President Donald Trump on Tuesday, May 26, yet again targeted TV journalist and former Congressman Joe Scarborough, reiterating his suspicion that the latter killed a woman who worked for him in 2001. He told reporters “there’s no statute of limitations” and called her death “very suspicious”.
Trump spoke on the matter in the White House Rose Garden after he was asked about a series of tweets that shared a conspiracy theory that Scarborough was behind the death of Lori Klausutis, who worked in a Florida district office for him when he was a Congressman. She had an undiagnosed heart ailment and fell.
Trump, who once shared a good relation with Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ show, to whom he gave a number of interviews while running for the presidency in 2016, also insinuated that the politician-turned-journalist had an affair with Lori. “A lot of people suggest that. And hopefully someday people are going to find out,” Trump said, calling it a “very suspicious situation”. “Very sad and very suspicious,” he added.
Timothy, the widower of Lori, appealed to Twitter to delete Trump’s controversial tweets accusing Scarborough of murdering his wife. In a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, which was published by the New York Times in an opinion piece on Tuesday, he wrote: “My request is simple: Please delete those tweets”. He said his late wife “deserves better”. Trump told a reporter that he has seen Timothy’s letter but added that people would want “to get to the bottom of it” and called the situation “very serious”. He also supported Kayleigh McEnany, his press secretary, who blamed Scarborough when asked the reason why the president kept on repeating the conspiracy theory.
“I also saw a clip with Joe and Imus where they were having a lot of fun at her expense and I thought it was totally inappropriate,” Trump said. He was speaking in reference to a clip showing Scarborough talking with morning radio show host Don Imus.
“In 2003, on Don Imus’s show, it was Don Imus and Joe Scarborough that joked about killing an intern, joked and laughed about it. That, I'm pretty sure was pretty hurtful to Lori's family and Joe Scarborough himself brought this up with Don Imus and Joe Scarborough himself can answer it,” McEnany said. “This morning or yesterday Mika (Brzezinski, Scarborough's wife) accused the president of being responsible for 100,000 deaths in this country. That's incredibly irresponsible. They've dragged his family through the mud. They should be held accountable for their falsehoods."
What is the case all about?
Almost two decades ago, Lori worked as an aide to Scarborough, who was then-Republican Congressman from Florida. Lori died at the age of 28 after hitting her head on a desk at the Florida office and authorities said it happened after she lost consciousness from an abnormal heart rhythm and ruled out any foul play in her death. Trump, however, revived the issue as recently as the past weekend to float suspicion that Scarborough had an affair with Lori and murdered her. Earlier in May, he even called for a probe against the thrice-married Scarborough, asking whether he “got away with murder”.
Timothy took on Trump in his letter, saying the latter was making use of his wife’s death to gain politically and alleged that Trump’s tweets were against Twitter guidelines. “An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet but I am only asking that these tweets be removed,” he said. Last year, California Senator Kamala Harris also asked Twitter to suspend Trump’s account for not abiding by the platform’s guidelines but the social media giant said world leaders do not always have to follow its rules.
Twitter said in a statement in response to Timothy's request that it was feeling sorry about the pain that the statements were causing to the family and was working on expanding the product features and policies so such issues can be addressed. Trump's tweets were not deleted though.
Scarborough, 57, and his current wife, Brzezinski, also a TV journalist, have seen their relationship with Trump sour over the past few years. In June 2017, some months after Trump became the president, Scarborough decided to leave the Republican Party and the former also mocked Brzezinski on Twitter, saying she was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” when she visited him at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in 2016 end. Scarborough and his wife were critical of Trump over his handling of the Lori case. Scarborough, who was 900 miles away in Washington the day his former staffer died, responded to Trump’s controversial tweets, saying he didn’t understand the “pain” that he caused to the Klausutis family and its friends.
“I know you meant to be extraordinarily cruel to me by attacking me, by bringing up a conspiracy theory that has lived in the gutters of the internet for some time now,” said Scarborough, adding: “But just like the Seth Rich conspiracy ‘murder’ that was pushed by your allies, you don’t understand the pain you cause.” Brzezinski hit back at Trump calling him a “cruel, sick, disgusting person” and appealed to Twitter to take down his tweets. In a tweet, she said: "Donald Trump has no decency and refuses to show a trace of humanity toward a grieving widower. No lies can deflect the awfulness of his behavior. History will judge harshly those who defend this cruelty and callousness." She also tagged the hashtag #Pleasedeletethosetweets.
The journalist couple, Scarborough and Brzezinski, has been fiercely critical of the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic that has left almost 100,000 Americans dead.