MNSBC’s Joe Scarborough has reignited his long-simmering feud with Donald Trump over the former president’s claim that the morning show host killed an intern back when he was a congressman.
Scarborough recalled the former president attacking him in May 2020 over the 2001 death of Lori Klausutis while speaking on his show ‘Morning Joe’ on Tuesday.
Klausutis had been working for Scarborough, who was back then a GOP congressman, when she died in his Florida district office after falling and hitting her head.
Trump has consistently implied there was more to the incident and that Scarborough had played a part in her death, a notion that has been debunked.
‘When Donald Trump decided to attack me because he didn’t like my COVID coverage and he lied about a woman who worked in my office and claimed that we were involved and that I had her killed,’ Scarborough began his rant.
Scarborough recalled the former president attacking him in May 2020 over the death of Lori Klausutis in 2001 while speaking on his show ‘Morning Joe’ on Tuesday
Klausutis had been working for Scarborough, then a Republican Florida congressman, when she died in his district office after falling and hitting her head
‘And her husband, the widowed husband, begged him to stop lying because of the excruciating pain that it put her parents through and put him through – the fact that he had not been able to move on for 25 years because of the lies,’ he continued.
‘They could not find rest or peace. And Donald Trump didn’t care. He just kept doing it because he didn’t care what the family thought.
‘He didn’t care what the husband thought. He didn’t care [about] the people whose grief he was only making worse.’
Scarborough brought up his past run ins with Trump as he slammed his Vice President pick JD Vance for ‘exploiting’ the death of Aiden Clark, seen here
Scarborough brought up his past run-ins with Trump as he slammed his vice president pick, J.D. Vance, for ‘exploiting the grief’ of two Ohio parents.
He claimed Vance politicized the death of their 11-year-old son Aiden Clark, who was killed on his way to school when his bus was forced off the road by a van.
That incident happened in August 2023, with driver Hermanio Joseph, a legal Haitian immigrant, later being convicted of manslaughter and vehicular homicide.
On the show, Scarborough and his co-host and wife Mike Brzezinski had highlighted a story in the New York Times about the parents.
Their coverage says they have been struggling after their son’s story was used by MAGA to attack immigrants.
Scarborough added: ‘I can’t imagine the pain those parents are going through. And then to watch their son, their child used as a political prop, to be lied about, 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
He added: ‘We have a family enduring that pain because their son’s being lied about for political purposes and they have been put on notice.
‘The father spoke before the city council, I believe a month or two ago, saying please stop lying about my son.
‘You know nothing about him. And if you did, you would know this is the opposite of what he would be saying right now based on the wonderful short life that he lived.’
Scarborough said that Vance and Trump had used the young boys death ‘without shame’ and ‘decency’.
He said there had been a dramatic shift in the standards in US politics, and that Republicans were exploiting the death of Aiden just for power.
‘If you think this is normal, well you haven’t been around 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 somebody did this, they would be excommunicated. Nobody would talk to them.
‘Their leadership would say, “You apologize to the parents, you take back the lie or you will be stripped of your committees tomorrow. You straighten up”, he added.
Trump had posted a series of posts to his Twitter page while in office in May of 2020 concerning the death of Klausutis.
He insinuated that the two had an affair, writing: ‘”Concast” should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough.
Scarborough and his co-presenter and wife Mike Brzezinski had highlighted a story in the New York Times about the parents of Clark, the couple are seen here in 2015
‘I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is ‘nuts’. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE’.
This launched him into a month-long Twitter rant where he continued to push for the case to be reopened into the late Scarborough staffer Lori Klausutis’ death.
‘I’ve always felt he got away with murder,’ Trump told Fox News Channel’s Brian Kilmeade on the anchor’s radio show in June of that year. ‘That was my feeling, my very strong feeling, and I do feel it.’
Klausutis’ widower Timothy begged then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to remove the tweets due to them causing hurt for 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 foul play in the death of Klausutis, and it was determined that her death was a result of an undiagnosed heart problem that caused her to pass out and fatally hit her head.