White House offered me deal, Scarborough says

Host: Aides said Trump would kill story for apology

USA TODAY

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” TV host Joe Scarborough said Friday that three top White House staffers told him President Donald 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.

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.

He said his response was, “like, ‘Are you kidding me. I don’t know what they have; run a story; I’m not going to do it.’ The calls kept coming, and they were like, ‘You need to call; please call.’ ”

Trump has often spoken of his personal ties with David Pecker, the owner of the National Enquirer. During the 2016 campaign, Trump several times referred to negative stories in the tabloid aimed at his rivals, such as Ben Carson and Ted Cruz.

After Scarborough’s appearance 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 responded with his own tweet to deny that he had phoned Trump. “Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records. Also, those records show I haven’t spoke with you in many months.”

Scarborough and his co-host and fiancee Mika Brzezinski postponed a vacation and appeared on “Morning Joe” on Friday to respond to a series of very personal tweets from Trump on Thursday.

Although Scarborough declined to name the officials, New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reported Friday that one of them was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.