President Trump on Monday increased the already-tense relationship between him and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough by implying that the anchor may have had a connection to an intern’s death while he was a congressman.
Trump took to Twitter to call on “Concast,” a play on cable giant Comcast’s name, to “open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against 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,” Trump tweeted.
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The president did not state the name of the intern, but the New York Post, among others, identified her as Lori Klausutis. Klausutis was 28 years old when she was found dead in Scarborough’s office back in 2001, the report said. The report said the medical examiner ruled her death accidental. There has been no evidence linking Scarborough to her death.
Scarborough responded to the president’s tweet while on air Monday and said it was wrong of him to “drag a family through this and make them relive it again,” the Washington Examiner reported.
An MSNBC spokesperson told the Examiner that “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.”
ToddStarnes.com left a message with the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office for comment.
This is not the first time that Trump raised suspicions into Klausutis’ death. Back in 2017, he asked if NBC would fire Scarborough over the so-called “unsolved mystery,” the Associated Press reported.
Klausutis worked for Scarborough in his Fort Walton Beach office. An autopsy showed that she suffered from an undiagnosed heart ailment and apparently hit her head as she passed out.
She was discovered lying on her back “with her head near a desk,” according to a police report. The Washington Post reported that her death became the subject of conspiracy theories. She was married an, according to the Tampa Bay Times, known as “Little Miss Mary Sunshine.”
The AP reported that she died a month after Scarborough said he was leaving office. He was in Washington at the time of her death.