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It Seems Like Donald Trump Publicly Accusing Cable News Hosts of Murder Should Be a Bigger Deal

And yet here we are.

ByVivian Kane May 12th, 2020, 4:22 pm

Donald Trump gestures wildly during a meeting.

Donald Trump is on a Twitter tirade that has now entered its third full day. He’s been tweeting about a nonexistent “OBAMAGATE” conspiracy, demanding NBC fire Chuck Todd, attacking Democrats and the media in general, and so much more. Since Mother’s Day, as of this writing, he’s tweeted or retweeted 213 times.

In one of those tweets, he accused MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough of possibly murdering someone.

“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,” Trump wrote early Tuesday morning during the time Scarborough’sMorning Joewas airing. “Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!”

This isn’t the first time Trump has questioned the “cold case” on Scarborough. He’s brought it up a few times in recent days, and he alsotweeted about it back in 2017. It’s not clear why the conspiracy theory popped back up on his radar but it is, as you’d probably guess, completely baseless.

Trump appears to be alluding to an incident in 2001, during Scarborough’s time as a member of Congress, when Lori Klausutis, a 28-year-old aide working in his office, died suddenly.

The last time Trump tried to drudge up the conspiracy,theWashington Post’sLindsey Bever wrote,

But Klausutis’s death is not an unsolved mystery: Authorities determined 16 years ago that she died after losing consciousness from an abnormal heart rhythm and collapsed, striking her head. She was discovered in Scarborough’s office in Fort Walton Beach, lying on her back with her head near a desk, according to a 2001 police report.

The circumstances of Klausutis’s death on July 20, 2001, have prompted conspiracy theories — some of which appear to persist. But no foul play was suspected, and her death was ultimately ruled an accident by the medical examiner.

Scarborough responded on-air to Trump’s most recent tweet shortly after he posted it, calling his accusation “extraordinarily cruel.”

Remember what it was like to live in a world where the president accusing a cable news host of actual murder—not to mention dredging up the death of a young woman as a way to attack one of his critics—would be enough to get people’s attention, maybe stir some genuine outrage? Instead, this just blends in with all theother weird and terrible stuffTrump tweeted ordid over the last three days(and the three years before that).

(image: MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane - Politics Editor

Vivian Kane (she/her) has a lot of opinions about a lot of things. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri with her husband Brock Wilbur and too many cats.