‘Morning Joe’ hosts say Trump ‘not well’
Insulted TV hosts targeted by tweets are concerned about president’s ‘obsession’ with them
In an op-ed and on their show Friday, the hosts of
Morning Joe questioned the mental and emotional fitness of President Trump after Thursday’s Twitter attacks.
The title of the op-ed published in The Washington Post
may say it all: “Donald Trump is not well.”
In the piece, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough addressed what they called the president’s “unhealthy obsession” with their show. According to the pair, the president’s closest advisers said he continues to watch the show on MSNBC, though he claims the opposite.
“That is unfortunate,” they wrote. “We believe it would be better for America and the rest of the world if he would keep his 60-inch-plus flatscreen TV tuned to Fox and Friends.”
On their show, Scarborough said he was concerned about the very personal attacks on Brzezinski. He noted that he has insulted the president and called him a racist. “And for some reason, he always goes after Mika,” he said.
The response from Brzezinski and Scarborough came nearly a day after Trump attacked them both, resulting in backlash from many in the political world, including members of Trump’s own party.
“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). 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!” he wrote on Twitter.
They called out the president for his insult about Brzezinski, saying she has never had a facelift.
“Putting aside Mr. Trump’s never-ending obsession with women’s blood, Mika and her face were perfectly intact, as pictures from that night reveal,” they wrote. “And though it is no one’s business, the president’s petulant personal attack against yet another woman’s looks compels us to report that Mika has never had a face-lift.”
On Morning Joe, Brzezinski said she believed his attacks came as a response to her making fun of Trump for having fake Time magazine covers in his clubs.
She assured viewers that she was fine, noting that family issues such as the death of her father and the health of her mother were of more importance to her than the president’s tweets.
That said, she wondered about what Trump’s behavior meant for his dealings with foreign and domestic policy.
“It is unbelievably alarming that this president is so easily played by cable news hosts,” she said.
In the Post op-ed, they echoed criticism about how the president’s tweets were misogynistic.
“More significant is Mr. Trump’s continued mistreatment of women. It is disturbing that the president of the United States keeps up his unrelenting assault on women,” they wrote. “From his menstruation musings about Megyn Kelly, to his fat-shaming treatment of a former Miss Universe, to his braggadocio claims about grabbing women’s genitalia, the 45th president is setting the poor- est of standards for our children.”
Scarborough elaborated during Morning Joe: “He attacks women because he fears women.”
He described a call with an unidentified member of Congress who told him about how, when GOP members arrived at the White House after the passage of the House health care bill this year, the president went on a tirade about Morning Joe.
When speaking about Brzezinski, the president “turned vicious” and mentioned blood coming out of her ears and eyes, Scarborough said.
They disputed the president’s claims that they had spent three days at the Mar-aLago resort in December. In the op-ed, they said Scarborough attended a dinner Dec. 30, and Brzezinski visited the next day after a request from Trump.
Scarborough and Brzezinski said in their op-ed that White House staffers warned them that the National Enquirer would publish a negative story about them unless they apologized for their coverage of the president.
“We ignored their desperate pleas,” they wrote.
“It is unbelievably alarming that this president is so easily played by cable news hosts.” Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, writing in The Washington Post