This space doesn’t usually get into specifics related to President Trump’s Twitter antics. There are too many policy issues on which to focus. But the President’s Twitter rants accusing MSNBC host Joe Scarborough of murdering an intern when he served in Congress in 2001 are beyond anything that we have seen in the past.
While the twitter posts on Scarborough appeared six times over the last month, they have been escalating. This is what Trump posted on May 12: “When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so. Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!”
Scarborough has been a frequent critic of the president. The intern, Lori Klausutis, died of a heart condition that caused her to collapse and hit her head on a desk. The police found no evidence of foul play subsequent to her death, and Trump has introduced no new evidence.
Lori’s widower, Timothy Klausutis, recently wrote a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey asking for the tweets to be removed. Klausutis wrote: “ I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him – the memory of my dead wife – and perverted it for perceived political gain.”
Dorsey has refused to remove the posts. At Twitter’s annual meeting on Wednesday, a shareholder asked Dorsey about removing the tweets. While Dorsey said they feel horrible about what the Klausutis family is going through, “we also believe that it’s important that people have conversations around what’s happening, especially with our global leaders, that they can push back, that they can speak truth to power, that they can share and show why this particular behavior is not right, and not just.”
Twitter’s decision not to delete the posts have merit and are understandable, but Trump’s smear campaign against Scarborough, and the subsequent pain felt by the Klausutis family, are not conversations about “what’s happening.”
Trump has continually demeaned the office of the presidency with his behavior on Twitter. Just when it is thought Trump has stooped to a new low, he continues to go lower. And all of this is happening shortly after we reached 100,000 deaths from coronavirus.