Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough Respond to Trump's Twitter Attack
4:33 AM PDT 6/30/2017 by Jeremy Barr
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Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski
"We're OK, the country's not," the two said on the 7 a.m. hour of their show, 'Morning Joe.'
Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough delayed their planned vacation and appeared on their show Morning Joe Friday morning to respond to President Trump's shockingly personal attack on them a day earlier.
"I’m fine," Brzezinski said. "My family brought me up really tough. This is absolutely nothing for me personally. But I am very concerned as to what this once again reveals about the president of the United States."
"We’re OK, the country’s not," Scarborough said. "Yesterday was just another example of how deeply personal he is. He attacks women because he fears women."
Brzezinski also said she's concerned about the larger ramifications of Trump's actions, and what they signify. "He appears to have a fragile, childlike, impetuous ego that we’ve seen over and again, especially with women," she said. "It’s like he can’t take it."
Brzezinski said she does not regret the segment that allegedly incited Trump, during which she joked about how the president reportedly hung a fake Time magazine cover of himself in his home.
"I thought it was hilarious, and I still do," she said. "I stand by my joke."
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The two also pushed back on Trump's comments in his weekly column for The Washington Post, correcting the narrative about their interaction with them at his home in Florida around New Year's Eve, and passing along a story about a planned hit-piece in the National Enquirer.
"This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked," they wrote. "We ignored their desperate pleas."
On their show Friday, Brzezinski said: "They were calling children, they were calling my close friends, they were pinning the story on my ex-husband."
Scarborough mentioned that Trump is friends with David Pecker, who owns the Enquirer's parent company.
"Donald Trump called me during the campaign and bragged about his friend who runs the National Enquirer," he said. "There were all these stories that were planted in the National Enquirer for people who Donald Trump wanted to attack."
On Thursday, Trump had said on Twitter that Brzezinski came with Scarborough to Mar-a-Lago three nights in a row around New Year's Eve and insisted on joining him, and he said no. "That is false," the couple wrote in response in the Post. "He also claimed that he refused to see us. That is laughable."
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They explained: "The president-elect invited us both to dinner on Dec. 30. Joe attended because Mika did not want to go. After listening to the president-elect talk about his foreign policy plans, Joe was asked by a disappointed Mr. Trump the next day if Mika could also visit Mar-a-Lago that night. She reluctantly agreed to go. After we arrived, the president-elect pulled us into his family’s living quarters with his wife, Melania, where we had a pleasant conversation. We politely declined his repeated invitations to attend a New Year’s Eve party, and we were back in our car within 15 minutes."
Also, Trump claimed that Brzezinski was "bleeding badly from a face-lift," but the two said she's never had a facelift. "She did have a little skin under her chin tweaked, but this was hardly a state secret," they wrote. "Her mother suggested she do so, and all those around her were aware of this mundane fact."
On the show, she said, "I’m pretty transparent about what I do, and I think it looks awesome."
