Twitter rebuffs widower who wanted Trump slurs removed
Twitter has turned down an emotional plea from a widower to remove tweets in which President Donald Trump insinuated that his wife was murdered by a television presenter.
The president has repeatedly called for Joe Scarborough, 57, the host of a morning news show on MSNBC, to be investigated over the death of Lori Klausutis in 2001.
At the time Scarborough was a Republican congressman and Klausutis, then 28, worked in his office in Florida.
She was found dead on her back near a desk. The authorities concluded that she had suffered an abnormal heart rhythm and died after collapsing and striking her head.
Foul play was not suspected. Scarborough was 1500km away in Washington at the time.
Trump has repeatedly suggested that Scarborough was involved in Klausutis’s death. ‘‘A lot of interest in this story about Psycho Joe Scarborough,’’ he tweeted. ‘‘So a young marathon runner just happened to faint in his office, hit her head on his desk, & die? I would think there is a lot more to this story than that? An affair?’’
On Sunday he wrote: ‘‘A blow to her head? Body found under his desk? Left Congress suddenly? Big topic of discussion in Florida . . . and, he’s a Nut Job (with bad ratings). Keep digging, use forensic geniuses!’’
Yesterday Timothy Klausutis, Lori’s widower, wrote to Jack Dorsey, the chief executive and co-founder of Twitter, asking him to delete Trump’s tweets. ‘‘I am asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him – the memory of my dead wife – and perverted it for perceived political gain,’’ he wrote.
Klausutis, 52, who has not remarried and lives in the house he shared with his wife, argued that the tweets violated Twitter’s rules. ‘‘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 wrote.
Klausutis added: ‘‘I would also ask that you consider Lori’s niece and two nephews who will come across this filth in the future. They have never met their Aunt and it pains me to think they would ever have to ‘learn’ about her this way. My wife deserves better.’’
Scarborough and his co-host and wife, Mika Brzezinski, read the letter out on their Morning Joe programme yesterday. Twitter said it would not remove the tweets. ‘‘We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family,’’ a spokesman said. ‘‘We’ve been working to expand existing product features so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.’’
Trump was undeterred, and several hours after the letter was published tweeted: ‘‘The opening of a Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough was not a Donald Trump original thought, this has been going on for years, long before I joined the chorus. In 2016 when Joe & his wacky future exwife, Mika, would endlessly interview me, I would always be thinking about whether or not Joe could have done such a horrible thing?’’ – The Times