Trump Falsely Accuses Joe Scarborough

[AGBF]

If you have not been following this little Trump melodrama, you have some fun Twitter reading ahead of you. Just when you think Trump cannot do anything to surprise you, he does. I had been aware that he was once friendly with the hosts of the television program "Morning Joe". The relationship changed over the years since Trump became president, but I never knew about this story. Donald Trump was smearing Joe Scarborough on Twitter, falsely accusing him of murdering his secretary when he was a young congressman.

"WASHINGTON — President Trump smeared a prominent television host on Tuesday from the lectern in the Rose Garden with an unfounded allegation of murder, taking the politics of rage and conspiracy theory to a new level even as much of the political world barely took notice.
In an attack that once would have been unthinkable for a sitting president, Mr. Trump all but accused Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman who now hosts the MSNBC show 'Morning Joe,' of killing a staff member in 2001 even though he was 800 miles away at the time and the police ruled her death an accident."

Trump Pushes a Conspiracy Theory That Falsely Accuses a TV Host of Murder (Published 2020)

On Twitter and at a news conference, the president said Joe Scarborough was responsible for the death of Lori Klausutis, who worked for him when he was a congressman. But Twitter refused her husband’s request to have the false tweets removed.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Demon]

I have nothing to back it up, but I heard Scarborough was out of town when it happened. Take it for what it's worth. But Trump should not be doing this and I hope Scarborough (assuming he's innocent) sues the hell out of him when Trump is no longer in office.

 

[AGBF]

This link will take you to a letter written by the widower of the secretary. He is writing to the chief executive of Twitter asking him to remove tweets by Donald Trump.

Timothy Klausutis’s Full Letter to Jack Dorsey, and Twitter’s Response (Published 2020)

Mr. Klausutis asked Mr. Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, to remove President Trump’s tweets that push a debunked conspiracy theory about the death of his wife, Lori Klausutis. Twitter said it would not do so.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Calliecake]

I feel terrible for the young woman’s family. Her husband has written a letter to Twitter asking for Trump’s tweet to be deleted on this subject.

 

[soxfan]

Trump is absolutely insane.

 

[JPie]

He’s unhinged.

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

It was underhanded, un presidential, and a LIE.
Shameful for our established leader, no matter party affiliation.
When is America going to say enough? He has tarnished and destroyed and semblance of respect for the office.
He disgusts me.

 

[MarionC]

Reuters this morning reported that Twitter finally fact checked Trump and put up a warning with a link to the real facts.
Trump, outraged, said they were interfering with his freedom of speech.

Twitter fact-checks Trump tweet for the first time

Twitter on Tuesday for the first time prompted readers to check the facts in tweets sent by U.S. President Donald Trump, warning that his claims about mail-in ballots were false and had been debunked by fact checkers.

www.reuters.com

 

[MollyMalone]

I have nothing to back it up, but I heard Scarborough was out of town when it happened. Take it for what it's worth. But Trump should not be doing this and I hope Scarborough (assuming he's innocent) sues the hell out of him when Trump is no longer in office.

In late 2017 (after Trump lobbed his first innuendos), a local newspaper, the NW Florida Daily News, posted a PDF of its coverage of the death in 2001. The initial report says that then Rep. Scarborough was in Washington DC & flew to Florida on the afternoon of Friday, July 20 (Ms. Klausutis' body had been discovered at his Fort Walton Beach office that morning); returning to Florida for weekends was his usual routine because that's when the divorced-since-1999 dad had visitation with the two sons by his first marriage. Here's the Daily News' full PDF

http://site.nwfdailynews.com/docs/KLAU2.pdf

and here's the ME's report:

https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/c360dac3-7aef-41a5-afe9-5ca9a57128b2/note/1ddb96f5-3a9e-4bd4-9962-22e6f0475f7c.#page=1

I have not seen anything from any credible source that casts doubts on Scarborough's whereabouts between Thursday afternoon, July 19, and 8 AM on the 20th.

It would be very difficult for Scarborough to prevail in a defamation lawsuit against Trump. whose tweets pose musing questions, don't declare outright assertions of fact. And based on this tweet from him, Scarborough isn't interested in starting litigation that would cause Ms. Klausutis' family to suffer further anguish:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1265469839147249666

But that doesn't make the "President" (adopting his use of air quotes) any less despicably reprehensible.

 

[AGBF]

And based on this tweet from him, Scarborough isn't interested in starting litigation that would cause Ms. Klausutis' family to suffer further anguish:

...​

But that doesn't make the "President" (adopting his use of air quotes) any less despicably reprehensible.

I think you are right on target, MollyMalone. I do not get my information from Twitter, but from everything I know, Joe Scarborough has no desire to sue Donald Trump. He isn't looking at blowing up this incident, but in getting Trump to stop using the family as a tool with which to attempt to harm him. He has said many times that he (Joe Scarborough) is a big boy and a fair target for Trump, but that this family is not.

 

[House Cat]

Trump will do anything to distract from the fact that 100,000 people have died due to his mismanagement of the Coronavirus.

 

[Demon]

In late 2017 (after Trump lobbed his first innuendos), a local newspaper, the NW Florida Daily News, posted a PDF of its coverage of the death in 2001. The initial report says that then Rep. Scarborough was in Washington DC & flew to Florida on the afternoon of Friday, July 20 (Ms. Klausutis' body had been discovered at his Fort Walton Beach office that morning); returning to Florida for weekends was his usual routine because that's when the divorced-since-1999 dad had visitation with the two sons by his first marriage. Here's the Daily News' full PDF

http://site.nwfdailynews.com/docs/KLAU2.pdf

and here's the ME's report:

https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/c360dac3-7aef-41a5-afe9-5ca9a57128b2/note/1ddb96f5-3a9e-4bd4-9962-22e6f0475f7c.#page=1

I have not seen anything from any credible source that casts doubts on Scarborough's whereabouts between Thursday afternoon, July 19, and 8 AM on the 20th.

It would be very difficult for Scarborough to prevail in a defamation lawsuit against Trump. whose tweets pose musing questions, don't declare outright assertions of fact. And based on this tweet from him, Scarborough isn't interested in starting litigation that would cause Ms. Klausutis' family to suffer further anguish:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1265469839147249666

But that doesn't make the "President" (adopting his use of air quotes) any less despicably reprehensible.

Yeah, it would probably be hard for Scarborough, even if he wanted to sue. But damn, I wish something could put a stop to Trump's BS. Maybe twitter will actually flag those tweets with a fact check, since they won't remove them.

 

[Demon]

What's good for the goose......(apparently there is no Carolyn, but it serves him right)

 

[Tekate]

If you or I posted something akin to this on Twitter, we'd be banned or put in jail for a few days. The pain this is causing this woman's husband 19 years after her death is indeed appalling.

 

[Matata]

Trump Threatens To Shut Down Social Media After Twitter Adds Warning To His Tweets

President Trump's vow to "strongly regulate" such platforms comes a day after Twitter added a fact-check label to a pair of his tweets and renews his argument that those sites silence conservatives.

www.npr.org

 

[MollyMalone]

I'm trying to find some comfort in the fact that the Wall Street Journal (one of Rupert Murdoch's media enterprises) and the conservative Washington Examiner published editorials last night condemning these Trump tweets. The WSJ editorial is behind a paywall, but here's the Washington Examiner editorial -- which points out that then Rep. Scarborough was present for 6 votes taken in the House on Thursday, July 19, 2001 (the last one being at 7:09 pm) and the 10:10 AM roll call vote on Friday morning.

Trump’s slanderous attack on Joe Scarborough is incompatible with leadership - Washington Examiner

Nearly two decades ago, when Joe Scarborough was a conservative Republican member of Congress from Florida, his office suffered a tragedy. One of his staff, a 28-year-old woman, named Lori Klausutis, collapsed from a heart condition while working alone in his Fort Walton Beach, Florida, office...

www.washingtonexaminer.com

 

[AGBF]

I am quoting an excerpt from an article in "The New York Times" which says what MollyMalone does in a different (narrative) way.

"Some of President Trump’s most stalwart media defenders broke ranks with him on Wednesday, aghast at his baseless smears against the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, whom Mr. Trump has all but accused of killing a former staff member two decades ago despite a total lack of evidence.

The backlash even spread to the senior levels of Mr. Trump’s party on Capitol Hill, where the No. 3 House Republican, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, said the president should drop the matter and focus on leading the country through the coronavirus pandemic. 'I would urge him to stop it,' she told reporters, referring to the false allegations.

The vast majority of Republican officials have kept silent about the president’s Twitter barrage against Mr. Scarborough, and the most prominent conservative voices on Fox News, like Sean Hannity, let the subject go unmentioned on recent broadcasts.

But Ms. Cheney’s criticism was a sign of stepped-up pressure on Mr. Trump from the right, reflected in this week’s unusual chorus of reproach from the conservative media platforms the president often turns to for comfort.

The New York Post, Mr. Trump’s first read in the morning, lamented in Wednesday’s paper that the president 'decided to suggest that a TV morning-show host committed murder. That is a depressing sentence to type.' In a staff editorial, The Post addressed its most powerful reader directly: 'Trust us, you did not look like the bigger man.'

The Washington Examiner, a popular conservative news site, published a scathing article calling Mr. Trump’s attacks 'incompatible with leadership' and 'vile.' Mr. Trump is usually enamored of The Examiner, one of the few news sites to which he routinely grants interviews, including one this month.

And the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, a bellwether of establishment conservatism, called Mr. Trump’s unfounded accusation against Mr. Scarborough 'ugly even for him.'

'We don’t write this with any expectation that Mr. Trump will stop,' The Journal wrote in its editorial. 'Perhaps he even thinks this helps him politically, though we can’t imagine how. But Mr. Trump is debasing his office, and he’s hurting the country in doing so.'
If the blowback affected Mr. Trump, the president has not shown it. He taunted Mr. Scarborough — a former Republican congressman and one-time social acquaintance of Mr. Trump who is now one of his harshest TV critics — again on Wednesday in a tweet that referred to a 'Cold Case.'

The president’s attacks have caused anguish to the family of Lori Klausutis, the staff member in Mr. Scarborough’s former congressional office who died in 2001 when a heart condition caused her to fall and hit her head on a desk. Mr. Scarborough was not present and the police ruled her death an accident. Ms. Klausutis’s relatives have said that the president’s evocation of her death and his unfounded insinuation that she had an affair with Mr. Scarborough have caused them deep distress.
Senator Mitt Romney, the Utah Republican and a frequent Trump critic, tweeted on Wednesday in support of her widower, T.J. Klausutis. 'His heart is breaking,' Mr. Romney wrote. 'Enough already.' Representative Peter King, Republican of New York, told reporters on Wednesday that the president’s claims were 'out of bounds,' adding, 'there’s no evidence.'

Another House Republican, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, used Twitter to implore Mr. Trump to halt his attacks. 'Completely unfounded conspiracy,' he wrote. 'Just stop. Stop spreading it, stop creating paranoia. It will destroy us.'”

‘Ugly Even for Him’: Trump’s Usual Allies Recoil at His Smear of MSNBC Host (Published 2020)

The Wall Street Journal and Washington Examiner chastised the president as a top House Republican, Liz Cheney, urged him to “stop” his attacks on Joe Scarborough.

www.nytimes.com

 

[caf]

Shameful! The poor woman had an undiagnosed heart condition that killed her.

 

[doberman]

Although I feel very badly for the widower in this case, I want Trump to keep tweeting crap like this. In fact, the more, the better, so that people can really appreciate what horrible human being he is.

 

[AGBF]

Although I feel very badly for the widower in this case, I want Trump to keep tweeting crap like this. In fact, the more, the better, so that people can really appreciate what horrible human being he is.

That dog won't hunt, doberman. His followers will follow him anywhere forever. The quality of his tweets could even get worse and his followers would never get a clue. Sorry to dash your illusions.

 

[doberman]

That dog won't hunt, doberman. His followers will follow him anywhere forever. The quality of his tweets could even get worse and his followers would never get a clue. Sorry to dash your illusions.

His followers, no, of course not. But it's the fence-sitters that I'm interested in, those who are not invested in any candidate, but still want to vote. There are a lot of them out there.

 

[AGBF]

This tweet by Donald Trump that drew condemnation wasn't about Joe Scarborough. I wasn't sure, out of the myriad places where I could put this item, where I should give it a home. I thought that here, where Trump's tweets were already under discussion was as good a place as any since inappropriate tweets are the subject both of this thread and the article.

Twitter Adds Warnings to Trump and White House Tweets, Fueling Tensions (Published 2020)

Twitter said the tweets, which implied that protesters in Minneapolis could be shot, glorified violence — the first time it had applied such warnings to any public figure’s posts.

www.nytimes.com

 

[AGBF]

CNN Arrest Is What Actual Censorship Looks Like (Published 2020)

After days of presidential complaining about Twitter policies, the live-TV arrest of a CNN crew showed America an actual offense against the First Amendment.

www.nytimes.com

 

[OboeGal]

His followers, no, of course not. But it's the fence-sitters that I'm interested in, those who are not invested in any candidate, but still want to vote. There are a lot of them out there.

Agreed. This is entirely the only reason I post about these kinds of topics on social media. My husband will become exasperated: "Why do you waste your time rebutting that person? You'll never change their mind!" To which I always say that I know I won't change their mind, but I'm interested in all the silent eyes reading the exchange who are on the fence.