White House officials offered strange swap, ‘ Morning Joe’ host says
Scarborough: President offered to get story spiked if he apologized
MSNBC’s Morning Joe TV host Joe Scarborough said Friday that three top White House staffers told him President Trump could arrange to “spike” a negative story about him in the National Enquirer if Scarborough would call the president and apologize for his negative coverage of Trump.
He described the White House officials as “three people at the very top of the administration.”
“They said, ‘ If you call the president up and you apologize for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone and basically spike the story,’ ” Scarborough said.
Scarborough said his response was, “Are you kidding me? I don’t know what they have, run a story, I’mnot going to do it.
“The calls kept coming, and they were like, ‘ You need to call, please call,’ ” he said.
Scarborough declined to name the White House officials.
Trump has often spoken of his longstanding personal relationship with David Pecker, the owner of the National Enquirer. During the 2016 campaign, Trump referred to negative stories in the tabloid aimed at rivals Ben Carson and Ted Cruz.
In response to Scarborough’s remarks Friday morning, Trump 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”
Scarborough quickly responded with his own tweet to deny he had phoned Trump: “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.”
In August, Trump tweeted during the campaign, “Some day, when things calm down, I’ll tell the real story of @JoeNBC and his very insecure long- time girlfriend, @morningmika. Two clowns!”
Scarborough and his co- host and fiancée, Mika Brzezinski, said the White House appeals came after Brzezinski’s daughters and ex- husband began getting calls this year, purportedly from National Enquirer reporters, indicating a negative story was in the works.
Last summer, Brzezinski divorced James Hoffer, an investigative reporter based in New York, after 23 years of marriage.
Scarborough, who divorced his second wife, Susan Warren, in 2013 after 12 years of marriage, said a tabloid reporter staked out Brzezinski’s house and questioned him as he was leaving.
“They were calling my children, they were calling close friends and they were pinning this story onmy ex- husband, who I knew would never do that, so I knew immediately that it was a lie and that they had nothing,” Brzezinski said.
On June 2, the Enquirer ran a story on the pair with the headline “Joe & Mika: TV couple’s Sleazy Cheating Scandal.” The article alleged that Scarborough paid “hush money” to his ex- wife and forced her to sign a gag order to prevent her from discussing his relationship with Brzezinski.
The National Enquirer issued a statement Friday saying it “accurately reported” a story in early June recounting the relationship between Scarborough and Brzezinski, “the truth of which is not in dispute.”
“At no time did we threaten either Joe or Mika or their children in connection with our reporting on the story,” said Dylan Howard, chief content officer of American Media, which owns the tabloid.