MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski recently took a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, billing it as regular, run-of-the-mill journalism.
But behind the scenes, some say the Morning Joe co-hosts are “petrified of retribution,” as Puck reporter Dylan Byers’ sources put it.
That’s general retribution—for things like comparing Trump to Hitler—and targeted retribution, for a conspiracy theory, which Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, believes: that two-plus decades ago, Scarborough murdered one of his congressional interns, 28-year-old Lori Klausutis.
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Klausutis worked for the anchor when he served as the representative for Florida’s 1st Congressional District (incidentally, Gaetz’s old seat). She died in Scarborough’s office after passing out and hitting her head, the result of what the coroner determined was an undiagnosed heart condition.
Scarborough wasn’t even in the state when Klausutis died, and her death was ruled an accident. Nonetheless, the conspiracy may have come to Trump’s attention thanks to Gaetz, who once showed up at the Oval Office with a folder full of printouts framing Scarborough.
After that meeting, Trump started tweeting with abandon about the alleged murder, posts Twitter eventually removed under pressure from Klausutis' widower.
Late last month, Scarborough brought up the conspiracy on Morning Joe when he spoke out against Trump, saying: “When Donald Trump decided to attack me because he didn’t like my COVID coverage and he lied about a woman who worked in my office and claimed that we were involved and that I had her killed, and her husband, the widowed husband, begged him to stop lying because of the excruciating pain that it put her parents through and put him through—the fact that he had not been able to move on for 25 years because of the lies.”
“They could not find rest or peace,” he added, “and Donald Trump didn’t care. He just kept doing it because he didn’t care what the family thought. He didn’t care what the husband thought. He didn’t care [about] the people whose grief he was only making worse.”
Even though there’s no truth to the allegation, Brzezinski and Scarborough are worried that in a new Trump administration, Gaetz will make their lives “a living hell,” Puck reports, just because he can. (An MSNBC spokesperson denied to Puck that any fear of retribution motivated the hosts’ trip to Mar-a-Lago.)
CNN’s Brian Stelter notes that Trump and his lieutenants have repeatedly threatened revenge against their enemies and opponents, members of the press included.
Just last week, former White House adviser Steve Bannon advised MSNBC specifically, “Preserve your documents.” He also mentioned several employees by name, warning producers they should “lawyer up.”
Threats aside, MSNBC viewers and staffers alike have trashed the couple’s decision to meet with Trump, one network “regular” reportedly telling Stelter: “Not since Bezos refused to endorse did a news outlet so betray and misread its audience.”
