Donald Trump’s Tweet Exposes Strange Blackmail Scheme Against ‘Morning Joe’ Co-Hosts

Is President Using National Enquirer to Blackmail Journalists? Some Journalists Say Yes.

President Donald Trump appears to have just implicated himself in a blackmail scheme.

After being attacked by President Trump, MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski penned a Washington Post op-ed expressing their concern about the president’s fitness – to watch their show, and revealed some of the details the president had mentioned in his two-tweet attack.

“President Trump launched personal attacks against us Thursday, but our concerns about his unmoored behavior go far beyond the personal,” the co-hosts write. “America’s leaders and allies are asking themselves yet again whether this man is fit to be president. We have our doubts, but we are both certain that the man is not mentally equipped to continue watching our show, ‘Morning Joe.'”

That was the first paragraph of their opinion column titled, “Donald Trump is not well.”

This is the second:

“The president’s unhealthy obsession with our show has been in the public record for months, and we are seldom surprised by his posting nasty tweets about us. During the campaign, the Republican nominee called Mika ‘neurotic‘ and promised to attack us personally after the campaign ended. This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper calls it a “stunning charge.”

To the casual reader this may have seemed an odd thing to mention up so high in the op-ed, when there are so many other things they discuss, but they know their audience well, and his name is Donald Trump.

Likely assuming Trump wouldn’t get very far in their counter-attack, they clearly baited him up top.

And it worked.

“Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show,” Trump tweeted just before 9 AM Friday.

It took Joe Scarborough all of seven minutes to respond.

“Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records. Also, those records show I haven’t spoken with you in many months,” he tweeted to Trump at 9:02 AM.

“Why do you keep lying about things that are so easily disproven? What is wrong with you?” Scarborough followed up with at 9:03 AM.

On Friday morning’s show, the couple offered more background, as Philly.com’s Rob Tornoe reports (see video above):

“We got a call from the White House that the National Enquirer is going to run a negative story against you guys. Donald is friends with the guy who runs the National Enquirer,” Scarborough said, claiming he received multiple calls from three individuals at the top of the Trump administration saying the president would call the Enquirer’s owner David Pecker and spike the story if he personally apologized to him for Morning Joe’s coverage.

“That’s blackmail,” Morning Joe co-host Donnie Deutsch said.

“They were pinning the story on my ex-husband,” Brzezinski added, “And I knew he would never do that. So I knew it was a lie and they had nothing. These calls persisted for quite some time. They were threatening. They were calling my children.”

“These calls persisted for quite some time. Then Joe had the conversations that he had with the White House where they said, ‘This could go away,” Brzezinski said. “Our response, after talking to my ex-husband, talking to Joe, talking to my kids, was ‘screw it, let them run it.’”

So, let’s sum up.

The President admits first of all that he has the power to “stop a National Enquirer article.” That in itself is news, and should make the paper’s readers at least ask why.

Raw Story’s Brad Reed has the answer:

The National Enquirer’s “boss David Pecker is a longtime Trump ally.”

WATCH: Scarborough Says GOP Congressman Told Him He ‘Was Scared’ for Morning Joe Co-Hosts After Trump Private Explosion

The link mentioning David Pecker goes to a new article by Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker. 

Next, as ThinkProgress editor and founder Judd Legum says, what Scarborough is describing is blackmail:

Both Trump and the “Morning Joe” co-hosts admit The National Enquirer was going to run a scandalous piece on Scarborough and Brzezinski. For some reason apparently it did not. But clearly, both parties acknowledge there was a story and there was discussion between the co-hosts and the White House, be it Trump and/or his aides, to kill it.

Some responses via Twitter:

Former GOP Congressman:

Journalism school professor:

Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones:

Former Obama DOJ chief spokeasperson:

CNN senior media correspondent:

Also via Twitter, again, ThinkProgress’ Judd Legum offers a thread that includes these statements, and a link to ThinkProgress’ story by Aaron Rupar, “Morning Joe hosts say Trump tried to blackmail them with National Enquirer hit-piece”:

 

2. They are accusing President Trump of BLACKMAIL. This isn’t just tawdry. It could be illegal

3. They are basically accusing Trump of ordering the National Enquirer to pursue a hit piece against them

4. They describe Mika, Joe and her kids being harassed over a period of time

5. The top White House aides contact Joe and say it’ll all go away if he calls Trump and apologizes for his coverage

6. Implicit here is a promise to make future coverage more favorable to the White House

7. These are very serious charges and, according to Joe, he has written proof that it happened