Trump again tweets about Scarborough conspiracy, despite heavy criticism By Morgan Chalfant - 05/27/20 09:41 AM EDT President Trump on Wednesday yet again raised a conspiracy theory about the death of an aide to former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.), despite a barrage of criticism about his earlier tweets from lawmakers, the media and the widower of the woman who died. Trump tweeted about Scarborough minutes before today's showing of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" concluded, underscoring how the topic is on his mind, and on his refusal to back down on the subject in the face of criticism. “Psycho Joe Scarborough is rattled, not only by his bad ratings but all of the things and facts that are coming out on the internet about opening a Cold Case,” the president tweeted. “He knows what is happening!” There is no cold case involving Scarborough. Trump is referring to the 2001 death of Lori Klausutis, an aide who worked in his Florida office when Scarborough served in Congress. Klausutis, who had an undiagnosed heart condition, fell and hit her head at work in 2001 and was found dead the following morning. Scarborough was in Washington at the time, and the medical examiner ruled her death an accident. Timothy Klausutis, Lori’s husband, recently penned a letter to Twitter asking the social media platform to take the president’s tweets down, accusing Trump of taking the memory of his deceased wife and “pervert[ing] it for perceived political gain.” The president dismissed the letter when asked about it on Tuesday, saying he read it but that he believed Klausutis’s family wanted to “get to the bottom” of her death. “It’s a very suspicious thing, and I hope that somebody gets to the bottom of it. It would be a very good thing. As you know, there is no statute of limitations,” the president told reporters at an event in the White House Rose Garden. Trump's raising of the conspiracy comes as the United States approaches a grim milestone of 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus. The nation is expected to clear that figure on Wednesday. Trump has weathered intense criticism over his tweets, including from some in his own party. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) on Sunday urged Trump to stop spreading “unfounded conspiracy” and “creating paranoia.” The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board on Wednesday called Trump’s tweets a “presidential smear” in a piece published before the president again posted a message about Scarborough. “Mr. Trump always hits back at critics, and Mr. Scarborough has called the President mentally ill, among other things. But suggesting that the talk-show host is implicated in the woman’s death isn’t political hardball. It’s a smear,” the Journal’s editorial board wrote. “Mr. Trump rightly denounces the lies spread about him in the Steele dossier, yet here he is trafficking in the same sort of trash.”
The Wall Street Journal scolded President Trump in a Wednesday editorial for tweets promoting a conspiracy theory surrounding a woman who died while working at MSNBC host Joe Scarborough's former congressional office in Florida, calling the president's allegations "trash" and "ugly even for him." "Donald Trump sometimes traffics in conspiracy theories — recall his innuendo in 2016 about Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination — but his latest accusation against MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is ugly even for him," the board wrote. "Mr. Trump always hits back at critics, and Mr. Scarborough has called the President mentally ill, among other things. But suggesting that the talk-show host is implicated in the woman's death isn't political hardball. It's a smear," it continued. Mr. Trump rightly denounces the lies spread about him in the Steele dossier, yet here he is trafficking in the same sort of trash." "We don’t write this with any expectation that Mr. Trump will stop. 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," the board concludes. The editorial comes one day after the widower of Lori Klausutis, the woman who worked in Scarborough's office, had asked Twitter in writing to remove the posts by Trump. Klausutis died in 2001 after an abnormal heart rhythm caused her to lose consciousness and hit her head on a desk in Scarborough’s congressional office in Florida. Her death was ruled an accident. "My request is simple: Please delete these tweets," Timothy Klausutis wrote on Tuesday. Twitter expressed sympathy for the pain the president is causing the family but refused to take down the tweets. “We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family," a Twitter spokesperson told The Hill in a statement. "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." Trump most recently tweeted about Scarborough and Lori Klausutis on Wednesday.