President Trump urged Comcast to investigate MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough regarding the death of one of his former congressional interns.
Lori Klausutis, 28, was an intern for Scarborough, who was a GOP lawmaker representing Florida’s 1st District from 1995 to 2001, when she was found dead in Scarborough’s district office in Okaloosa County, Florida, in July 2001. Her death was ruled accidental, and the medical examiner concluded that she had an abnormal heart rhythm. She lost consciousness in the office and fell and hit her head on the desk, which led to her death.
“’Concast’ should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough,” Trump tweeted Monday morning. “I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is ‘nuts’. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE.”
“Concast” should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough. I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is “nuts”. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 4, 2020
Comcast owns NBCUniversal, which includes MSNBC.
Scarborough responded to the president’s tweet on-air shortly afterward, calling it “extraordinarily cruel.”
“You, once again, drag a family through this and make them relive it again, just like Seth Rich’s parents,” argued the Morning Joe co-host. “As if losing a loved one the first time isn’t enough. But this weekend, my God, you were supposed to have a working weekend. You got it wrong again.”
“Attempts to intimidate and bully the free press, including through the bizarre peddling of fringe conspiracy theories, will not prevent Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski or any of MSNBC’s journalists or analysts from holding power to account,” an MSNBC spokesperson told the Washington Examiner after publication. “We’ll continue to accurately and thoroughly report on the White House’s handling of the Coronavirus pandemic.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has called for Scarborough to be investigated for Klausutis’s death. In a November 2017 tweet, the president referred to her death as an “unsolved mystery” and urged for unspecified people to “investigate!”
In a letter to Variety Fair in 2005, the television host said he had only met Klausutis three times and was never alone with her in response to conspiracy theories that there had been a love affair.
