Trump pans TV host’s looks and brains; GOP pleads: Stop!
He gets it from all sides for trash-talking tweets
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!”
Joe Scarborough and Brzezinski co-host the show.
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.”
“This has to stop — we all
have a job — 3 branches of gov’t and media,” tweeted Republican Susan Collins of Maine. “We don’t have to get along, but we must show respect and civility.”
Tweeted Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a frequent Trump critic: “Please just stop. This isn’t normal and it’s beneath the dignity of your office.”
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted, “Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.”
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.
First lady Melania Trump, who has vowed to fight cyberbullying while her husband is president, gave his tweets a pass.
“As the first lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder,” her communications director, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement.
The White House has shown increasing irritation over harsh coverage of the president on Brzezinski and Scarborough’s “Morning Joe,” including commentary questioning Trump’s mental state.
About two hours before his tweets, Brzezinski said on the show that “it’s not normal behavior” for any leader to be tweeting about people’s appearances or to be bullying, lying, undermining managers and throwing people under the bus. She said that if any business executive behaved the way Trump does, “there would be concern that perhaps the person who runs the company is out of his mind.”
On Wednesday, she had mocked Trump after
a story in The Washington Post said he had posted fake Time magazine covers of himself in some of his golf resorts.
“Nothing makes a man feel better than making a fake cover of a magazine about himself, lying every day and destroying the country,” Brzezinski said.
Trump’s demeaning broadside against a woman raised new complaints among critics who have long accused him of sexism and inflaming tensions in a deeply polarized nation. Trump also has consistently stoked a long-running feud with the press that has not hurt him with his base of roughly a third of the electorate.
Brzezinski and Scarborough, who are engaged, have known Trump for years and interviewed him numerous times during the campaign. But they have been highly critical of Trump since he took office. They did meet with Trump at his Florida estate on New Year’s Eve for what they described as a brief visit.
But Brzezinski supporters disputed Trump’s characterization of the Mar-a-Lago meeting, saying it was the president who repeatedly asked the couple to visit him. Brzezinski and Scarborough were staying in the area for the holidays.