Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough sparked a new war of words with President Donald Trump after the pair accused him of threatening them with a National Enquirer report about their relationship.
Brzezinski, 50, and Scarborough, 54, shed new light on their feud with Trump Friday, accusing him of threatening the couple that a supposedly unfavorable news story would be published if they didn’t apologize to him for negative coverage on their MSNBC show.
“This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked,” the duo, who got engaged in May, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published Friday, June 30. “We ignored their desperate pleas.”
“It’s blackmail,” Brzezinski added on Morning Joe’s Friday, June 30, episode. “Let me explain what they were threatening. They were calling my children, they were calling close friends and they were pinning the story on my ex-husband. I knew immediately that it was a lie and that they had nothing.”
The National Enquirer responded to the allegations Friday. The chief content officer of the magazine’s parent company, American Media, Inc., Dylan Howard, said “at no time did we threaten either Joe or Mika or their children in connection with our reporting on the story. We have no knowledge of any discussions between the White House and Joe and Mika about our story, and absolutely no involvement in those discussions.”
American Media, Inc. also publishes Us Weekly.
Howard added: “At the beginning of June, we accurately reported a story that recounted the relationship between Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the truth of which is not in dispute.”
Trump defended his side of the story via Twitter on Friday morning: “Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. Fake news. He called me to stop a ‘National Enquirer’ article. i said no! Bad show.”
Scarborough responded to the president in two tweets shortly after. “Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records. Also, those records show I haven’t spoken with you in many months. Why do you keep lying about things that are so easily disproven? What is wrong with you?”
The couple’s allegation comes after the president insulted the MSNBC cohosts on Thursday, June 29, in two tweets. “I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore),” Trump’s post read. “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!
The coanchors also condemned’s Trump’s character on their morning talk show Friday. “It does worry me about the country. He appears to have a fragile, impetuous, childlike ego,” said Brzezinski, the target of Trump’s most recent tweets. “I’m fine. My family brought me up really tough.”
Added Scarborough, “He’s so much worse with women. He attacks women.”
Both Republican and Democratic law makers have slammed Trump over his tweets about Brzezinski.
“Obviously I don’t see that as an appropriate comment,” Speaker Paul Ryan remarked during a House Republicans news conference on Friday. “What we’re trying to do around here is improve the tone, the civility of the debate. And this obviously doesn’t help.”
California Congresswoman Maxine Waters tweeted on Thursday, June 29, “Women are outraged and fed up with this president. Impeachment isn’t enough. Should we explore exile?”
