MNSBC’s Joe Scarborough has reignited his long-running feud with Donald Trump over the former president’s claim that the morning show host killed an intern when he was a congressman.
Scarborough recalled that the former president attacked him in May 2020 over the 2001 death of Lori Klausutis while speaking on his ‘Morning Joe’ show on Tuesday.
Klausutis had been working for Scarborough, who was then a Republican congressman, when he died in his Florida district office after falling and hitting his head.
Trump has consistently suggested that there was more to the incident and that Scarborough had played a role in his death, an idea that has been debunked.
“When Donald Trump decided to attack me because he didn’t like my COVID coverage and lied about a woman who worked in my office and claimed that we were involved and that I had killed her,” Scarborough began his rant.
Scarborough recalled that the former president attacked him in May 2020 over the 2001 death of Lori Klausutis while speaking on his ‘Morning Joe’ show on Tuesday.
Klausutis had been working for Scarborough, then a Republican congressman from Florida, when he died in his district office after falling and hitting his head.
“And her husband, the widowed husband, begged her to stop lying because of the unbearable pain she put him and his parents through: the fact that he hadn’t been able to move on for 25 years because of the lies.” continuous.
‘They could not find rest or peace. And Donald Trump didn’t care. He kept doing it because he didn’t care what the family thought.
‘She didn’t care what her husband thought. He didn’t care about the people whose pain was only getting worse.’
Scarborough brought up his past clashes with Trump when he criticized his vice president pick, JD Vance, for “exploiting” the death of Aiden Clark, seen here.
Scarborough brought up his past clashes with Trump and criticized his vice president pick, JD Vance, for “exploiting the pain” of two Ohio parents.
He claimed that Vance politicized the death of his 11-year-old son, Aiden Clark, who was killed on the way to school when a pickup truck forced his bus off the road.
That incident occurred in August 2023, and driver Hermanio Joseph, a legal Haitian immigrant, was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter and vehicular manslaughter.
On the show, Scarborough and his co-host and wife Mike Brzezinski had highlighted a story in the New York Times about parents.
Their coverage says they have been fighting after MAGA used their son’s story to attack immigrants.
Scarborough added: ‘I can’t imagine the pain those parents are going through. And then to see their son, their son, used as a political prop, lying about him, making the pain worse.’
Joseph was driving with an invalid license when his Honda Odyssey minivan veered over the center line and collided with a school bus, killing Clark.
And he added: ‘We have a family that endures this pain because they lie about their son for political purposes and they have been warned.
“The father spoke to the city council, I think a month or two ago, saying please stop lying about my son.
‘You don’t know anything about him. And if you did, you would know that this is the opposite of what he would be saying right now based on the wonderful, short life he lived.’
Scarborough said Vance and Trump had used the young man’s death “without shame” and “decency.”
He said there had been a dramatic shift in the standards of American politics and that Republicans were exploiting Aiden’s death just to gain power.
‘If you think this is normal, then you haven’t been in politics long enough, because I can tell you if it happened while I was in Congress.
‘If it happened while Claire (McCaskill) was in the Senate and someone did this, they would be excommunicated. Nobody would talk to them.
“Their leaders would say: ‘Apologize to the parents, withdraw the lie, or tomorrow they will strip you of your committees.’ Straighten up,” he added.
Trump had published a series of posts on his Twitter page while in office in May 2020 about Klausutis’ death.
He hinted that the two were having an affair, writing: ‘”Concast” should open a long-delayed cold case in Florida against psychopath Joe Scarborough.
Scarborough and his co-host and wife Mike Brzezinski had featured a story in the New York Times about Clark’s parents, the couple seen here in 2015.
‘I know him and Crazy Mika well, I used them wonderfully in the last election, I left them very well and I will go on record as saying that he is ‘crazy’. Also, bad grades! #OPENCASEJOECOLDCASE’.
This launched him into a month-long Twitter rant in which he continued to push for the case to be reopened following the death of deceased Scarborough employee Lori Klausutis.
“I’ve always felt like he got away with it,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s Brian Kilmeade on the host’s radio show in June of that year. “That was my feeling, my very strong feeling, and I’m sorry.”
Klausutis’ widower, Timothy, begged then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to remove the tweets because they caused harm to the family.
“Please delete those tweets,” Timothy Klausutis said in the letter to Dorsey. “My wife deserves better.”
He added: “I have mourned my wife every day since her passing. I have tried to honor her memory and our marriage.
“As her husband, I feel that one of my marital obligations is to protect her memory as I would have protected her in life.”
The autopsy found no criminal act in Klausutis’ death and it was determined that her death was the result of an undiagnosed heart problem that caused her to pass out and fatally hit her head.