Since announcing their post-election meeting with Donald Trump, Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have received a fierce backlash from the GOP and fellow members of the media, who described the stunt as “dishonest.”
The pair have defended their decision to visit the President-elect for the first time in seven years as an opportunity to “restart communications” after being fierce critics of Trump in the run-up to the 2024 election. In their coverage, Scarborough and Brzezinski described Trump as “erratic,” slamming his election fraud efforts and warning of “how dark of a place” the US would be if Trump won. In September, Scarborough said that it was “not a reach” to compare the President-elect to Hitler.
However, aside from the acrimony of the 2024 election cycle, a meeting between Scarborough and Trump is even more astonishing given their previous interactions, centered around the death of a young congressional staffer Lori Klausutis more than 20 years ago.
Before his career as a TV host and political commentator, Scarborough was a congressman, serving as the GOP representative for Florida’s 1st Congressional district from 1994 to 2001.
In July 2001, shortly after Scarborough announced his intention to resign, his 28-year-old aide Klausutis was found dead on the floor of his congressional office in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. The death prompted wild speculation and baseless conspiracy theories about Scarborough’s involvement.
Claims of his involvement were promoted by publisher Markos Moulitsas and by filmmaker Michael Moore, who publicly mused about registering the domain name JoeScarboroughKilledHisIntern.com.
However, an autopsy later revealed that Klausutis had an undiagnosed heart condition and a coroner concluded she passed out and hit her head as she fell. The coroner said the head injury caused the death, but she wasn’t struck by another person.
This did not stop Trump from reviving false conspiracies suggesting Scarborough was somehow involved in the young woman’s death over a decade later.
In November 2017, some 10 months into his first term, the President-elect took to X, then Twitter, to comment on the firing of NBC host Matt Lauer. “Will the Fake News practitioners at NBC… terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the ‘unsolved mystery’ that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!”
The tweet prompted much pushback from media outlets, including a fact-check from the Associated Press, which noted Klausutis’ conclusive autopsy report.
When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so. Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2020
In 2020, Trump went on a 10-day rant about the case once again, describing Scarborough as a “Nut Job” and incorrectly describing the incident as a “cold case.” “When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder?” he wrote on Twitter.
“Some people think so. Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!”
In a separate post, he continued: “A blow to her head? Body found under his desk? Left Congress suddenly? Big topic of discussion in Florida...and, he’s a Nut Job (with bad ratings). Keep digging, use forensic geniuses!”
Once again the posts prompted outrage online and from the media. Scarborough himself called Trump’s persistence in promoting the debunked conspiracy “unspeakably cruel” on the Klausutis family. “These are not public figures nor have they ever been public figures,” he said.
The May 2020 barrage even resulted in a letter being sent by Klausutis’ widower Timothy Klausutis to the then-CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey begging for him to intervene.
“The president of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain,” wrote Klausutis, who asked Dorsey for a modest remedy: “An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet but I am only asking that these tweets be removed.”
The platform did not remove the posts, but apologized to Klausutis and said it was taking steps to address similar issues in future.
Following their meeting with the once-again President-elect, Scarborough said that he, Brzezinski and Trump talked about “a lot of issues including abortion, mass deportations, threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets.
“It’s gonna come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show…that we didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of issues and we told him so,” he said. The death of Klausutis is undoubtedly one of the things that they disagree on. Whether it was mentioned in their recent visit to Mar-a-Lago, is another matter.
