WASHINGTON (AP) - The latest developments involving President Donald Trump and MSNBC (all times local):
9:10 a.m.
President Donald Trump is again blasting MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” saying on Twitter he watched the “low rated” show “for the first time in long time.” He calls the show, “FAKE NEWS.”
Trump says in a tweet that host Joe Scarborough called him “to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no!” He calls it a “Bad show.”
In a column posted on The Washington Post website, Scarborough and his co-host Mika Brzezinski say White House staff warned them the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about them “unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas.”
Trump on Thursday attacked the show’s hosts, saying host Brzezinski was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” in a December encounter.
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9 a.m.
Kellyanne Conway says the president had the right to fight back against critics, but she isn’t endorsing his attack on the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Conway is a senior adviser to Trump. She said on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” ’’I didn’t say I endorsed his attacks; I never said that. Bottom line, I endorse his ability to connect on social media with Americans.”
In a separate interview on Fox News, Conway said she’s “very pleased with how he treats women in the White House,” but notes that women in the public eye are often targets of vicious comments. She says: “I have kept my mouth shut on a never-ending assault based on my gender,” later adding, “But I’m here for a bigger purpose.”
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6:30 a.m.
Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have postponed a vacation in order to respond to President Donald Trump’s Twitter attack, saying Trump’s claim that Brzezinski was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” in a December encounter was a lie.
MSNBC’s Willie Geist said Scarborough and Brzezinski skipped a Red Sox game Thursday because they didn’t want to become a public spectacle. They planned to be on their show Friday an hour after its 6 a.m. ET start.
But in a column posted on The Washington Post website, the MSNBC hosts said Trump’s “unhealthy obsession” with their show doesn’t serve either his mental state or the country well.
They said Trump was lying about Brzezinski having a face-lift, although “she did have a little skin under her chin tweaked.”
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6:00 a.m.
The co-hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program have struck back against harsh tweets sent out by President Donald Trump.
In an op-ed in Friday’s Washington Post co-signed by anchors Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, the cable television talk show hosts acknowledged making critical statements about Trump’s presidency, but said that “our concerns about his unmoored behavior go far beyond the personal.”
They added, “America’s leaders and allies are asking themselves yet again whether this man is fit to be president.”
“We have our doubts,” they wrote, “but we are both certain that the man is not mentally equipped to continue watching our show.”
Trump on Thursday sent a Twitter post calling the pair “low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe.:
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3:20 a.m.
President Donald Trump launched a crude Twitter attack on the brains, looks and temperament of a female TV personality Thursday, drawing bipartisan howls of outrage and leaving fellow Republicans beseeching him: Stop, please just stop.
Trump’s tweets aimed at MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski revived concerns about his views of women in a city where civility already is in short supply and he is struggling for any support he can get for his proposals on health care, immigration and other controversial issues.
“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore),” Trump tweeted to his nearly 33 million followers Thursday morning. “Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”
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Associated Press writer David Bauder in New York contributed to this story.
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