{"id":9956,"date":"2020-05-26T21:49:22","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T04:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=9956"},"modified":"2020-05-27T06:26:46","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T13:26:46","slug":"post2-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=9956","title":{"rendered":"“Trump Pushes a Conspiracy Theory That Falsely Accuses a TV Host of Murder”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Peter Baker<\/span> and Maggie Asto, May 26, 2020<\/span><\/p>\n

On Twitter and at a news conference, the president said Joe Scarborough was responsible for the death of Lori Klausutis, who worked for him when he was a congressman. But Twitter refused her husband\u2019s request to have the false tweets removed.<\/em><\/p>\n

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WASHINGTON \u2014 President Trump smeared a prominent television host on Tuesday from the lectern in the Rose Garden with an unfounded allegation of murder, taking the politics of rage and conspiracy theory to a new level even as much of the political world barely took notice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In an attack that once would have been unthinkable for a sitting president, Mr. Trump all but accused Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman who now hosts the MSNBC show \u201cMorning Joe,\u201d of killing a staff member in 2001 even though he was 800 miles away at the time and the police ruled her death an accident.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The president\u2019s charge amplified a series of Twitter<\/a> messages in recent days that have drawn almost no rebukes from fellow Republicans eager to look the other way but have anguished the family of Lori Klausutis, who died when she suffered a heart condition that caused her to fall and hit her head on a desk. Mr. Trump doubled down on the false accusation even after Timothy Klausutis pleaded unsuccessfully with Twitter<\/a> to take down the posts about his late wife because they were causing her family such deep pain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cA lot of people suggest that and hopefully someday people are going to find out,\u201d the president said when asked by reporters about his tweets<\/a> suggesting that Mr. Scarborough had committed murder perhaps because of an affair with Ms. Klausutis. \u201cIt\u2019s certainly a very suspicious situation. Very sad, very sad and very suspicious.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Trump brushed aside the widower\u2019s letter asking that the family be left alone. \u201cI\u2019m sure that, ultimately, they want to get to the bottom of it and it\u2019s a very serious situation,\u201d the president said of Ms. Klausutis\u2019s relatives, calling on law enforcement to investigate. \u201cAs you know, there\u2019s no statute of limitations. So, it would be a very good, very good thing to do.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Mr. Scarborough said the president was being \u201ccruel and callous\u201d by making an innocent family the collateral damage of his war against critics. \u201cThe widower of a woman who died 19 years ago begged the president of the United States to stop torturing him and his family,\u201d Mr. Scarborough said in an interview. \u201cAnd yet he continues to torment this family and even went to Twitter accusing Lori of having an affair that resulted in her death.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Scarborough was in Washington when Ms. Klausutis, who was 28, died at a district office in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. The police found no sign of foul play, and the coroner concluded she had an undiagnosed heart condition that caused her fall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The latest burst of wild allegations and fact-free innuendo came at a time when Mr. Trump has appeared eager to redirect attention away from the continuing coronavirus pandemic that has claimed the lives of nearly 100,000 people<\/a> in the United States and cratered the American economy. Among other things on Tuesday, he boasted about the rising stock market and tried to sow doubt about the results of the coming fall election that polls currently show he would lose, saying, \u201cThis will be a Rigged Election.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a first, Twitter late Tuesday attached \u201cget the facts\u201d warnings<\/a> to two tweets in which Mr. Trump made false claims about voter fraud in California, and directed readers to fact-checking notes, a remarkable declaration by one of the nation\u2019s leading technology companies that the president cannot be trusted. But Twitter did not take down the tweets about Mr. Scarborough despite the request from Mr. Klausutis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m asking you to intervene in this instance because the president of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him \u2014 the memory of my dead wife \u2014 and perverted it for perceived political gain,\u201d Mr. Klausutis, 52, wrote in a letter<\/a> to Jack Dorsey, the company\u2019s chief executive. \u201cMy wife deserves better.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the letter, Mr. Klausutis said Mr. Trump had violated Twitter\u2019s terms of service by falsely suggesting that Mr. Scarborough killed Ms. Klausutis in 2001 when he was a Florida congressman and she was a constituent services staff member in one of his district offices.<\/div>\n
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\u201cAn ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet,\u201d Mr. Klausutis wrote in the letter, which was written last week and published on Tuesday<\/a> by Kara Swisher, a New York Times opinion writer, \u201cbut I am only asking that these tweets be removed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Twitter said Mr. Trump\u2019s tweets did not violate the company\u2019s terms of service<\/a>, even though its policies say users \u201cmay not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so.\u201d Instead, it offered words of sympathy for Mr. Klausutis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family,\u201d Nick Pacilio, a Twitter spokesman, said in a statement. \u201cWe\u2019ve been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Trump has a longstanding penchant for attacking rivals with conspiracy theories, like accusing President Barack Obama of being born in Africa<\/a> and linking Senator Ted Cruz\u2019s father<\/a> to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But raising murder allegations against a television host who has angered him once again gave the impression of a president willing to say almost anything no matter how inflammatory or untrue, even at the cost of reopening old wounds of a family uninterested in being used as a weapon in his political battles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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While once friendly with Mr. Scarborough and his fellow host and wife, Mika Brzezinski, Mr. Trump has long been exercised by their on-air criticisms and regularly attacked them. He raised Ms. Klausutis\u2019s death as far back as 2017<\/a> but in recent days has repeatedly and relentlessly hammered at it even as Mr. Scarborough and Ms. Brzezinski have been criticizing his handling of the pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cDid he get away with murder? Some people think so,\u201d Mr. Trump wrote of Mr. Scarborough<\/a> on May 12. \u201cKeep digging, use forensic geniuses!\u201d the president urged his followers<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cSo a young marathon runner just happened to faint in his office, hit her head on his desk, & die?\u201d he wrote on Sunday<\/a>. \u201cI would think there is a lot more to this story than that? An affair? What about the so-called investigator?\u201d<\/div>\n
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Mr. Trump persisted on Tuesday. \u201cIn 2016 when Joe & his wacky future ex-wife, Mika, would endlessly interview me, I would always be thinking about whether or not Joe could have done such a horrible thing?\u201d he wrote<\/a>. \u201cMaybe or maybe not, but I find Joe to be a total Nut Job, and I knew him well, far better than most. So many unanswered & obvious questions, but I won\u2019t bring them up now! Law enforcement eventually will?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Other Republicans have largely kept quiet about the matter. Spokespeople for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leaders in Congress, did not respond to requests for comments. Neither did spokespeople for Florida\u2019s Republican leaders, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio and Representative Matt Gaetz.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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One of the only Republicans to object has been Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who responded to one of the president\u2019s tweets over the weekend. \u201cCompletely unfounded conspiracy,\u201d Mr. Kinzinger wrote<\/a>. \u201cJust stop. Stop spreading it, stop creating paranoia. It will destroy us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the interview, Mr. Scarborough compared the attacks on him to how authoritarian leaders like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary try to silence dissenting journalists through made-up criminal investigations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s remarkable that we have a president who is trying to have someone prosecute the person he considers to be his chief critic in the media,\u201d Mr. Scarborough said. \u201cThat\u2019s what Putin does. That\u2019s what Orban does. That\u2019s what autocrats have been doing for centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At a briefing, Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, pressed by reporters, offered no evidence to back up the president\u2019s insinuations. Instead, she essentially justified them by saying that Mr. Scarborough had been critical of Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIf we want to start talking about false accusations, we have quite a few we can go through,\u201d she said. \u201cMika accused the president of being responsible for 100,000 deaths in this country. That\u2019s incredibly irresponsible. They\u2019ve dragged his family through the mud. They\u2019ve made false accusations that I won\u2019t go through that I would not say from this podium against the president of the United States and they should be held to account for their falsehoods.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Among the other \u201cfalsehoods\u201d she mentioned was Mr. Scarborough saying that people could die by taking hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug Mr. Trump has promoted as a remedy for the coronavirus that in fact doctors say could kill patients with heart conditions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Ms. McEnany also accused Mr. Scarborough of having \u201cjoked about killing an intern\u201d during an appearance years ago on Don Imus\u2019s radio show in 2003<\/a>. (Ms. Klausutis was not an intern, nor was she a marathon runner.) In fact, it was Mr. Imus who made a joke about having sex with an intern and killing her. Mr. Scarborough did not engage on the subject, but laughed and said, \u201cExactly. What are you going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Ms. Brzezinski, responding on Twitter<\/a>, said that Ms. McEnany was \u201clying\u201d about the nature of the 2003 clip, and that Mr. Scarborough \u201cwas embarrassed\u201d by Mr. Imus\u2019s \u201ccallous joke\u201d and was trying to move the conversation along.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Like Mr. Klausutis, Mr. Scarborough and Ms. Brzezinski have been in touch with Twitter officials about the president\u2019s tweets.<\/p>\n

Mr. Dorsey did not personally respond to Mr. Klausutis\u2019s letter on Tuesday. But Twitter has long been hesitant to remove posts from world leaders, even when they contain disinformation, on the grounds that posts from leaders are newsworthy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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There have been exceptions, especially during the coronavirus pandemic: In March, Twitter deleted posts by Presidents Nicol\u00e1s Maduro of Venezuela and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil in which they promoted unproven cures for the coronavirus. But it has not deleted any of Mr. Trump\u2019s posts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Dorsey has faced multiple calls over the years to remove Mr. Trump\u2019s misleading or false statements from the platform, including the president\u2019s suggestion<\/a> during a White House briefing last month that injecting disinfectant or using ultraviolet light could combat the coronavirus. Although Mr. Trump did not write about those subjects on Twitter himself, his statements led to a flood of other posts, videos and comments about false virus cures, which Twitter and other social media companies largely left standing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Twitter clarified its policy this month, stating that it would label tweets containing misinformation about the virus, including those posted by world leaders, with three broad categories: \u201cmisleading information,\u201d \u201cdisputed claim\u201d and \u201cunverified claim.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In his letter, Mr. Klausutis said that nearly two decades after his wife\u2019s death, his family had been deeply hurt by the persistence of the conspiracy theory, which originated on the political left when Mr. Scarborough was a Republican and then migrated to the political right when he began to shift politically.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAs her husband, I feel that one of my marital obligations is to protect her memory as I would have protected her in life,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThere has been a constant barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo and conspiracy theories since the day she died. I realize that may sound like an exaggeration, unfortunately it is the verifiable truth. Because of this, I have struggled to move forward with my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Baker reported from Washington, and Maggie Astor from New York. Davey Alba contributed reporting from New York.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0The New York Times<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Peter Baker and Maggie Asto, May 26, 2020 On Twitter and at a news conference, the president said Joe Scarborough was responsible for the death of Lori Klausutis, who worked for him when he was a congressman. But Twitter refused her husband\u2019s request to have the false tweets removed. WASHINGTON \u2014 President Trump smeared […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9956"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9956"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9963,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9956\/revisions\/9963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}