Posted on 07/01/2017 4:47:25 AM PDT by markomalley
"Morning Joe" co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Friday accused the White House of blackmailing them with an embarrassing story, but MSNBC is not planning to go public with evidence supporting the charge.
The MSNBC hosts said on air that "top" White House officials called them saying the National Enquirer would publish a negative story against them unless they apologized to President Donald Trump for their show's coverage of him. Scarborough and Brzezinski did not apologize and let the story run.
Trump refuted their claims, tweeting that Scarborough asked him to stop the story from getting published and he refused.
Scarborough called the president's statement a "lie" and said he had phone records to prove his story.
After Scarborough tweeted that he had proof of the blackmail story, MSNBC said it has no plans to release any phone records of conversations between the "Morning Joe" hosts and White House officials, according to Mediaite and Politico.
New York magazine reported Friday that Scarborough had discussed the pending National Enquirer story with Jared Kushner, a White House senior adviser and Trump's son-in-law, in mid-April. Kushner told Scarborough that he could stop the story from running by personally apologizing to Trump, which Scarborough refused to do, according to the report.
The Enquirer published the article in early June, headlined "Morning Joe Sleazy Cheating Scandal!"
The Daily Beast quoted an anonymous White House official who said the media was exaggerating the story.
"This is getting blown up on Twitter and elsewhere as some kind of blackmail operation," the official said. "The truth is far more mundane. In this case, Joe was talking to Jared about his [bad] relationship with the president and an Enquirer hit piece he was uneasy about."
"These calls persisted for quite some time," she said Friday on "Morning Joe." "They were threatening. They were calling my children."
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that he was "not aware" of any blackmail attempts, as did National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard.
"We have no knowledge of any discussions between the White House and Joe and Mika about our story, and absolutely no involvement in those discussions," Howard said in a statement.
Scarborough and Brzezinski discussed their blackmail story in detail after briefly referencing it Friday in a Washington Post op-ed. Their column was a response to Trump's tweets the prior day personally attacking the MSNBC hosts, including Brzezinski's appearance.
UPDATE 6/30/2017 8:05pm: A previous version of this story erroneously stated that Brzezinski claimed the White House, not the Enquire, had made the pressuring calls.
Old Banjo Boy may have stepped it this time. That boy don’t seem too smart if you ask me.
Does it have anything to do with the young aide who was found dead in Joe’s congressional office?
The enemy on the run, chasing stories and lines, twitter feeds and statements that THEY had been using against our BRILLIANT STRATEGIST, PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP since he came on the scene and I'm getting fatter and fatter from all the salt and butter on my popcorn.
Substantiate the accusations or YOU LIE!
More lying from the Fakestream Media.
Fixed it!
Let’s see the texts Joe.
Pick a fight and claim you’re the bullied victim...the way of the modern progressive I guess. Nothing to be proud of.
MSNBC refuses to release evidence detrimental to Trump?
Yeah, right.
Too obvious there is no evidence.
Can’t release anything until they finish making them up and getting someone with an IQ over 70 to write them.
Trump makes the story about them. And like a moth to a light they cannot help themselves.
Post of the month nominee right there.
Yup, just like Kathy Griffin, same M.O.!
The thing is, people aren't buying it anymore and Trump is exposing these jerks for what they are, lying sacks of s#!+.
If such an exchange happened, it sounds to me more like advice than threat. Like, "You know, if you would apologize to Trump, you would remove any basis for the story and National Enquirer would have nothing to publish."
Brzezinski, however, claimed that the National Enquirer was aggressive in pressuring them.
"These calls persisted for quite some time," she said Friday on "Morning Joe." "They were threatening. They were calling my children."
UPDATE 6/30/2017 8:05pm: A previous version of this story erroneously stated that Brzezinski claimed the White House, not the Enquire, had made the pressuring calls.
That's quite a large distinction, between the White House calling vs. the National Enquirer calling. Yet the story still tries to leave us with the impression that Trump was trying to blackmail Scarborough.
Whatever, this story just sounds like another hit piece, full of innuendo without having a single concrete fact to support its claims.
The Media has gotten to the point where I assume every thing they say is a lie. That assumption is correct more often than it is wrong.
Those two pigs dug the hole in which they are now wallowing. They could have kept to policy stories but instead started pushing smutty, personal rumors on the president and his family.
I give their upcoming marriage a few months...if they make it to a judge at all.
They kept poking the bear.
The bear finally turned on them.
Now, they are trying to outrun the bear.
MSNBC is waiting for a fax at a certain Kinko’s fax machine somewhere in Texas.
Currently, that fax machine seems to be producing a document for the AP.
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How long can these major news organizations continue to manufacture stories and claim them to be news? They already have near-zero credibility. They spend more time defending their own personnel than in reporting ‘real’ news.
But, as the CNN exec said, they are making a lot of money due to the stories [true or not] about President Trump. As in the days of the Republican debates and primaries, when Trump was involved, viewership skyrocketed. It seems that that is what CNN and other news organizations are feeding on — the Trump brand.
Accused with out facts OH wait media.
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