The sheer cruelty of Trump’s weird, conspiratorial Twitter rant against Morning Joe

“The opening of a Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough was not a Donald Trump original thought, this has been going on for years, long before I joined the chorus,” Trump tweeted. “In 2016 when Joe & his wacky future ex-wife, Mika, would endlessly interview me, I would always be thinking about whether or not Joe could have done such a horrible thing? Maybe or maybe not, but I find Joe to be a total Nut Job, and I knew him well, far better than most. So many unanswered & obvious questions, but I won’t bring them up now! Law enforcement eventually will?”

If you’re having trouble following these ramblings, here’s the background.

Before he was an MSNBC host, Scarborough, a former Trump ally turned sharp critic, was a Republican member of Congress from 1994 to 2001. Near the end of his time representing Florida in the U.S. House, a legislative aide of his, Lori Klausutis, collapsed from a sudden heart issue, hit her head, and was found dead in his office.

The fringe internet conspiracy that Trump has picked up on suggests that Klausutis was actually having an affair with Scarborough and that he murdered her to keep it quiet, then suddenly exited Congress.

This conspiracy theory, which never had evidence to support it, has been decisively proven false in a number of ways. As pointed out by the Washington Post’s fact-checker, there is no evidence that the two had a romantic relationship. The medical examiner determined that “an abnormal heart rhythm caused Klausutis to lose consciousness and fall, fatally striking her head.” She had told two people that day she felt ill. And, most importantly, the police left “no stone unturned” but “never suspected foul play.”

What’s more, Scarborough had already announced his retirement from Congress months before this occurred.

Unfortunately, Tuesday’s tweets were just the latest in a series of posts the president has written pushing this conspiracy:

The first problem here is obvious: It’s wildly irresponsible for the president of the United States to publicly and repeatedly accuse a critical journalist of murder without having any evidence, and that applies whether you like Scarborough or not. But this is actually not the worst part about what Trump has done. That would be his cruelty toward Klausutis’s family. They simply want to remember and mourn their lost loved one in peace. Trump has instead thrust them into the spotlight once again and subjected them to the worst of the internet.

“I have mourned my wife every day since her passing. I have tried to honor her memory and our marriage,” Klausutis’s widower wrote in a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. “There has been a constant barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo and conspiracy theories since the day she died. I realize that may sound like an exaggeration, unfortunately it is the verifiable truth. Because of this, I have struggled to move forward with my life.”