‘Morning Joe’ hosts lambasted by Trump
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump personally mocked television host Mika Brzezinski in vulgar terms on Twitter, drawing quick condemnations from leading Republicans as he once again generated a controversy while his White House struggles to get traction on its agenda.
As Brzezinski’s MSNBC show “Morning Joe” came to a close about 9 a.m., Trump insulted Brzezinski and her co-host Joe Scarborough, calling them “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” and “Psycho Joe,” adding that he had at one point seen Brzezinski “bleeding badly from a face-lift.”
The tweets were the latest in a barrage of attacks by Trump and his White House against media organizations, including CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, which he has accused of publishing false stories critical of his administration.
They came at an especially fraught time for the administration, and Republican congressional leaders moved quickly to repudiate his words.
“Inappropriate. Undignified. Unpresidential,” tweeted Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who was among the candidates Trump defeated in the race for the presidential nomination.
The reaction underscored the sense on Capitol Hill that members of his party increasingly have little fear of publicly contradicting the president. Recent polling has shown that even among Republican voters, many view his tweets as a distraction.
White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders denied that Trump had crossed a line.
“He fights fire with fire,” she told reporters at the White House press briefing. “When he gets attacked, he’s going to hit back,” she said.
Exactly what set off Trump’s ire was not known — Trump didn’t say. Scarborough and Brzezinski once had a fairly close relationship with Trump but have become increasingly tough in their comments about him.
In a statement, MSNBC said, “It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”
Brzezinski took her own jab, tweeting a photograph that revived an old jibe that has gotten under Trump’s skin in the past — that he has small hands.
Democrats, meantime, were quick to reopen two lines of attack against Trump — that he does not respect women and that he demeans the office he holds.
The latter theme resembles one George W. Bush used heavily in his 2000 presidential campaign in which he pledged to restore dignity to the White House after Bill Clinton’s scandals.
“I’m appalled. This is the president of the United States. You don’t do things like that. You don’t attack women,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein said on MSNBC.
The incident was hardly the first time Trump’s Twitter messages have jolted the capital, but the context was different this time. The attack on Brzezinski was more personal than most others Trump has made since he became president, more reminiscent of some of the verbal assaults he launched during his campaign, particularly his remarks about Megyn Kelly, another television anchor.