The White House is standing behind President Trump’s insult to MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski Thursday as an example of his willingness to hit back at critics.
Trump said Brzezinski was “bleeding badly from a facelift” in a tweet Thursday morning after ripping her show, Morning Joe, and her co-host and fiance, Joe Scarborough. His remarks were widely condemned on both sides of the aisle as unbecoming of his office, but there is no sign the White House is backing down from the controversy.
“I don’t think that the president has ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn’t push back,” deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders said on Fox News Thursday.
She added, “There have been an outrageous number of personal attacks, not just to him but everyone around him. … This is a president who fights fire with fire, and certainly will not be bullied by liberal elites.”
Morning Joe was once a friendly place for Trump, a show that he regularly called into in order to give her personal take on the news of the day before he ran for office. When he declared that he was running for president, he was a frequent presence on the show and had a friendly relationship with both Brzezinski and Scarborough.
However, the hosts soured on Trump as the campaign went along and became outright hostile in the later months of the campaign.
Since taking office, the anti-Trump rhetoric on the show has ramped up even further with Brzezinski speculating Trump was “mentally ill” at one point and often lecturing him — through the camera — about his tweets and his statements.
Sanders said those statements opened the door for Trump’s attack on Thursday.
“I’ve seen far worse things come out of that show, directed not just at the president but at everyone around him,” she said.
“The president isn’t going to be someone who’s bullied and allows people around him and himself to be personally attacked.”
