Washington D.C. (Special to ZennieReport.com) – What this all has to do with matters of true national law enforcement interest is a question, but for now the news is that there’s a reason the MSNBC Morning Joe team of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski went down to Trump’s home The Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach to see President-Elect Donald Trump.
Earlier this week it was reported that Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski visited the President Elect, but the New York Post used The Daily Show‘s John Stewart’s monologue to present the real reason they visited in his view:
“The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart mocked “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski for their hypocrisy in rushing to meet with President-elect Donald Trump — after the pair parroted Democrats who called him a danger to democracy.
Stewart played a clip of the MSNBC hosts explaining their decision to travel to Mar-a-Lago during his opening monologue Monday night.
“For those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back — why wouldn’t we?” Brzezinski said.
Stewart quipped: “Because you said he was Hitler.”
But it really turns out there’s an entirely other reason for Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s head-turning trip to see Trump: some say the Morning Joe co-hosts are “petrified of retribution,” for their slamming Donald Trump as a Hitler-level fascist.
According to the website Puck’s Dylan Byers,
Specifically, Joe and Mika have told friends and associates they’re afraid that Trump and Gaetz will resurrect a decades-old, totally bullshit, birther-level conspiracy theory about the death of Lori Klausutis, a 28-year-old intern in Scarborough’s former Florida congressional office who died in 2001 from complications relating to a heart condition, and use it to apply legal pressure on Scarborough and otherwise make his life a living hell. The couple’s anxiety stems, in particular, from testimony that former White House communications director and current View co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin gave in 2022 during the January 6 hearings, during which she recounted running into Gaetz outside of the Oval Office. Farah Griffin testified that Gaetz was carrying a folder filled with “conspiracy theories about Joe Scarborough murdering his intern,” which he then presented to President Trump, who later tweeted about it.
Despite the baseless nature of the conspiracy theory, Joe and Mika “are petrified of retribution and of Gaetz opening an investigation into Joe and the intern,” one source with knowledge of their concerns said. “That’s what this was about. It has nothing to do with ratings or Comcast. It’s all about fear of retribution and investigation.” Another source close to the matter said Joe and Mika believed that by meeting with Trump, they could assuage his potential desire for reckless payback and thus nuke any possibility of having to endure the headlines of a Gaetz witch hunt or legal torture campaign. (Reached for comment, Scarborough referred me to an MSNBC spokesperson, who denied this characterization of the motivations for Joe and Mika’s Mar-a-Lago visit and said it was both false and inaccurate.)
Trump’s 2017 Comments Give Reason For Joe And Mika’s Concerns In Trip To See Trump
According to the North West Florida Daily News in 2017, then President Trump made comments in the wake of the NBC termination of Matt Laeur following claims of “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace” (What’s appropriate?) that gave the Morning Joe couple reason to pause.
The Congressional record clearly indicates that on July 19, 2001, U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough, a Pensacola resident representing Florida’s First District, was present and accounted for in Washington, D.C.
On the day an employee, Lori Klausutis, died tragically inside his Fort Walton Beach satellite office, the young Republican congressman engaged in feisty debate with Democrat Anthony Weiner and cast several votes, including one taken not long before the U.S. House adjourned at 9:49 p.m.
Scarborough was hundreds of miles away from Fort Walton Beach when Klausutis, a woman he later told reporters he hardly knew, died. Yet 17 years later, the mention of her name never fails to drag Scarborough into conversations laden with conspiracy theories.
President Donald Trump didn’t even have to mention Klausutis by name in a Nov. 29 tweet that ignited the most recent social media firestorm to engulf Scarborough. The tweet began as commentary on NBC’s firing of talk show host Matt Lauer following allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.
“So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin?” Trump asked. “And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the “unsolved mystery” that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!”
Morning Joe Trump Visit Did Not Help Ratings, It Hurt Them
And now The Morning Joe team finds out that talking about Trump does not hold the rating gold it did when he was running for POTUS in 2016, or while he was in The White House from 2016 to 2020. The story of their visit to Mar-A-Lago only pissed off a good portion of their Democratic-leaning audience. Ratings dropped 38 percent.
Stay tuned for updates.