Screenshot/MSNBC
Michael Wolff
- Journalist Michael Wolff lashed out at MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski after the "Morning Joe" host tossed him off her show on Thursday.
- Brzezinski accused Wolff, the author of a controversial tell-all book about the Trump White House, of smearing United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley's reputation by suggesting that she is having an affair with the president.
- Wolff accused Brzezinski and her co-host, Joe Scarborough, of being "eager to gossip about who Trump might be sleeping with" off camera.
Journalist Michael Wolff lashed out at MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski after the "Morning Joe" host tossed him off her show on Thursday following Wolff's repeated denials that he suggested United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley had an affair with the president.
During an appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher" last month, Wolff suggested that President Donald Trump is having an extramarital affair and told the audience to "read between the lines" of a certain passage in his book. People then latched on to a sentence in the book that said Haley spends "a notable amount of private time" with Trump.
Brzezinski asked Wolff to explain why he made this accusation without providing any evidence or facts. Wolff denied that he had accused the former South Carolina governor of anything. Brzezinski then shut down the interview and abruptly went to commercial break.
Haley called the rumor "highly offensive," disgusting," and "absolutely not true" during an interview with a Politico last week, and added that she saw the suggestion as a personal attack.
"My bad, the President is right about Mika," Wolff tweeted shortly after the Thursday morning interview, arguing that Brzezinski set him up to be shut down. "To be invited on a show with the purpose of being thrown off ... is the new television."
He then doubled down on his assertion that he did not, in fact, accuse Haley of having an affair with Trump and that Haley decided to refute a rumor spread by others.
"Let me repeat: Nikki Haley has chosen to vociferously deny something she was not accused of," he said.
Wolff also accused Brzezinski and her co-host, Joe Scarborough, of hypocrisy, saying they've gossiped with him in private about Trump's rumored affairs.
"The last time I was on Morning Joe off camera Joe and Mika eager to gossip about who Trump might be sleeping with," he wrote. "It really would be hard to gossip more eagerly off camera than Mika and Joe gossip."