Trump faces criticism for trash-talking MSNBC hosts

WASHINGTON» President Donald Trump launched a crude Twitter attack on the brains, looks and temperament of a female TV personality Thursday, drawing bipartisan howls of outrage and leaving fellow Republicans beseeching him: Stop, please just stop.

Trump’s tweets aimed at MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski revived concerns about his views of women in a city where civility already is in short supply and he is struggling for any support he can get for his proposals on health care, immigration and other controversial issues.

“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore),” Trump tweeted to his nearly 33 million followers Thursday morning. “Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”

The tweets served to unite Democrats and Republicans for once in a chorus of protest that amounted to perhaps the loudest outcry since Trump took office.

“Obviously I don’t see that as an appropriate comment,” said Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called Trump’s tweets, “blatantly sexist.”

The president, she added, “happens to disrespect women ... it’s sad.”

Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma even linked the president’s harsh words to the June 14 shootings of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and three others.

“The president’s tweets today don’t help our political or national discourse and do not provide a positive role model for our national dialogue,” Lankford said, noting that he had just chaired a hearing on the shootings.

On Trump’s level of insult-trading, Brzezinski responded on Twitter by posting a photograph of a Cheerios box that included the phrase “made for little hands.”

People looking to get under the president’s skin have long suggested that his hands appear small for his frame.

Trump’s allies cast his outburst as positive, an example of his refusal to be bullied.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president was “pushing back against people who have attacked him day after day after day. Where is the outrage on that?”

“The American people elected a fighter; they didn’t elect somebody to sit back and do nothing,” she added.