- White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended President
Donald Trump 's promotion of a false conspiracy theory that MSNBC hostJoe Scarborough was involved in the 2001 death of a staffer. - On Tuesday morning, The New York Times published a letter that the staffer's widowed husband wrote asking the CEO of Twitter to delete Trump's tweets promoting the conspiracy theory.
- "The president said this morning that this is not an original Trump thought, and it is not," McEnany said, pinning the blame for Trump spreading conspiracy theories about it on a joke Scarborough made on a radio show in 2003.
- When pressed on the responsibility Trump bears for his own tweets, McEnany said: "I would point you back to Joe Scarborough on Don Imus' show. It's Joe Scarborough that has to answer these questions."
In a Tuesday afternoon briefing, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended President Donald Trump's promotion of a false accusation that MSNBC host and former Rep. Joe Scarborough was involved in the death of a staffer.
Over the past several weeks, as Scarborough has criticized the Trump administration, Trump has resurfaced the baseless conspiracy theory several times to his 80 million Twitter followers, saying that police should investigate whether Scarborough had anything to do with the 2001 death of his former staffer Lori Klausutis in his Florida district office when he was a Republican congressman.
A medical examiner determined that Klausutis fainted as a result of an undiagnosed heart condition, fell, and hit her head on a desk. The examiner found no evidence that anyone played a role in her death. Since her cause of death was ruled to be natural causes, no one has ever been charged and there is no cold case, as Trump has claimed. Scarborough, the cohost of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, is an extremely vocal Trump critic.
On Tuesday morning, The New York Times published a letter that Lori Klausutis' widower, T.J. Klausutis, wrote to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey asking him to delete Trump's tweets about his wife's death from the platform, saying, "The President of the United States has taken something that does not belong him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain."
Trump doubled down on the conspiracy theory after the letter was published on Tuesday morning, writing, "The opening of a Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough was not a Donald Trump original thought, this has been going on for years, long before I joined the chorus." He also called Scarborough "a nut job."
When she was asked if Trump had seen Klausutis' letter, McEnany said: "I don't know that he's seen the letter, but I do know that our hearts are with Lori's family at this time." She then pivoted to blaming Scarborough for the conspiracy theory and attacking both him and his wife, "Morning Joe" cohost Mika Brzezinski.
"Well, I would note that the president said this morning that this is not an original Trump thought, and it is not," McEnany said. "In fact, in 2003 on Don Imus' show, it was Don Imus and Joe Scarborough that joked about killing an intern — joked and laughed about it. So that was, I'm sure, pretty hurtful to Lori's family, and Joe Scarborough himself brought this up with Don Imus, and Joe Scarborough himself can answer it."
—Bloomberg QuickTake (@QuickTake) May 26, 2020
In the 2003 clip McEnany referenced, Imus says, "Don't be afraid to be funny because you are funny. You know, I ask you why you won Congress. You said you'd had sex with the intern and then you had to kill her. That's pretty risky to say." Scarborough replies, "What are you gonna do?" It is unclear whether they were referring to Klausutis.
When ABC News White House reporter Jonathan Karl told McEnany that Trump was not simply a private citizen like Imus spreading conspiracy theories and pushed back on her deflections, she attacked Scarborough and Brzezinski for their tweets criticizing Trump.
"If we want to start talking about false accusations, we have quite a few we can go through," she said. "This morning, it was either this morning or yesterday, Mika accused the president of being responsible for 100,000 deaths in this country. That's incredibly irresponsible. They've dragged his family through the mud. They've made false accusations ... and they should be held to account for their falsehoods."
When Karl again pressed McEnany to address Trump's tweets specifically, McEnany said, "I would point you back to Joe Scarborough on Don Imus' show. It's Joe Scarborough that has to answer these questions."
In response to Klausitus' letter, Twitter said they would not delete Trump's tweets fueling the conspiracy.
"We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement to Insider. "We've been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly."
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