‘Open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case’: Trump sparks war of words with MSNBC host over intern’s death

Donald Trump took some serious shots at MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough by insinuating his involvement in the years-old death of a young intern in Florida, with the morning show host responding angrily to the suggestion.

“‘Concast’ should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough,” the US president tweeted on Monday, referring to Comcast, the company that owns Scarborough’s employer. 

Trump continued by knocking Scarborough’s co-host Mika Brzezinski, and claiming their show, ‘Morning Joe,’ suffers “bad ratings.” The president finished his outburst with the hashtag #OPENJOECOLDCASE.

The “cold case” the president referred to likely concerns the death of Lori Klausutis, a 28-year-old intern found dead at her desk in Scarborough’s Fort Walton Beach office when he was a Republican congressman in 2001.

Though conspiracy theories have repeatedly swirled around the case, the medical examiner at the time found the death was accidental, with no other person involved. Klausutis had passed out from an undiagnosed heart condition before falling forward and hitting her head on the desk, the medical examiner said.

Trump’s accusations came shortly after Scarborough reported on poll numbers showing the president trailing Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden nationally. 

This is not the first time the president has brought up the Klausutis’ death – in 2017, Trump asked whether MSNBC should fire the television host over what he termed the “unsolved mystery.”  

Scarborough responded directly to Trump’s latest tweet on his show, calling it “extraordinarily cruel.” 

“You don’t understand the pain you cause to families who have already lost a loved one. Not me, not my children, not anybody that knows me — they know the truth. You, once again, drag a family through this and make them relive it again.”

The Morning Joe host added that the president’s Twitter feed is evidence of his mental instability, and he should “take a rest” and let Vice President Mike Pence “run things for the next couple of weeks.” 

Trump has often targeted members of the media with angry tweets, but connecting one of them to a sudden death is perhaps his most extreme jibe to date. What makes the tension between Trump and Scarborough more surprising – and maybe more personal – is that Trump appeared on Morning Joe numerous times leading up to the 2016 presidential election. It was one of the first mainstream TV shows to take him seriously, and Scarborough joked on several occasions about being an unofficial political adviser to Trump.

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