Scarborough, Brzezinski Insist They're 'Fine'; Allege Trump Extortion, Threats

MSNBC "Morning Joe" co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski Friday responded to a pair of tweets President Donald Trump posted slamming them and ridiculing Brzezinski's looks, insisting they were "fine," but concerned about what the tweets reveal about Trump.

They further publicly complained that they'd been told by sources in the White House that Trump would have a story about them "spiked" from appearing in the National Enquirer if they'd ease up on their criticism of him on their daily television program.

"I think we have to talk about it now, because it explains the relationship and his really strange obsession with this show and in particular, his really disturbing obsession with Mika," said Scarborough.

"We got a call that, 'hey, the National Enquirer is going to run a negative story against you guys' . . . and they said, 'if you call the president up and you apologize for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone and basically spike this story.'"

Brzezinski said the Enquirer was pinning its story on her ex-husband, but she knew he would not do a story and "they had nothing." She also claimed the publication was harassing her teenaged daughters.

"I was at Mika's house for a few minutes, and came out, and there was a guy in a van that was just staked out there watching," said Scarborough. "It was clear that he was from a tabloid, and he started asking questions. And then after all this started to happen, that's when we started getting calls from the White House, saying if you call, you need to call the president."

"Our response talking to my ex-husband and Joe and my kids was, screw it, let them run it," said Brzezinski. "Go ahead and run it."

Scarborough said the incident was disturbing, "when top White House aides are dealing with tweets or top White House aides are dealing with reporters trying to do whatever they were trying to do in the National Enquirer? It's just horrifying."

Overall, Brzezinski insisted that she is "fine" following Trump's tweets, but that the attacks were "frightening" for the United States.

"I've been getting a lot of texts and hearing you all talking," she said. "My family brought me up really tough. This is absolutely nothing. But I think for me, personally, I am very concerned as to what this once again reveals about the president of the United States. It's strange."

Scarborough said at first, when he heard about the tweets, which had been posted while their show was still on the air had to be a joke.

"The president of the United States as bad as he's been in the past, he hasn't really gone over the cliff," said Scarborough. "Then, unfortunately, we learned what we've always learned: he for some reason takes things so much more personally with women. He's so much more vicious with women."

Scarborough also claimed that he'd been told by a congressman who was at the White House with 20 other members to talk about the House healthcare bill, when Trump "went on this rant about 'Morning Joe.'"

"He went on and on and on and sort of brushed me aside, he's a joke, he's a joke, but then this senior member that everybody knows, said 'I just, I've never made a call like this. I've been in politics my whole life . . . he scared me, because he was vicious when he turned from you to Mika. His face was red. He started talking about blood coming out of her ears, out of her eyes.'"

Scarborough said the congressman told him that he was afraid for the couple.

"For some reason, we've seen this time and time again with Mika. I will insult him over the Muslim ban or say he's a racist, all these things through the year, and for some reason, he always goes after Mika, and it's always personal with Mika.

"And he packed about five lies into the tweets which is very productive, two tweets to pack five or six lies into two tweets, but yesterday was another example of how deeply personal he is. He attacks women, because he fears women."

Brzezinski said she has had several large items in her recent past to worry about, including the death of her father, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and her mother, who has had two heart attacks, and her daughter, who just lost a friend.

"Those are the things I'm really worried about," she said. "Those are the things that really deeply impact me, and leave me thinking about at night, and hurting and worrying and thinking about the future. The president's tweets? Whether they're personally aimed at me or aimed at me in some way, that doesn't bother me one bit. It does worry me about the country."

The tweets came after the couple ridiculed a fake Time magazine cover that had been seen on Trump's property, and "the White House claims we attacked him," said Scarborough.

"No, report on his lies. We are upset when he doesn't tell the truth and he bullies people. That is true. We sometimes mock him and have fun with things like we did with President [Barack] Obama with his bowling."

Meanwhile, he pointed out, the president of South Korea is at the White House today, and "when he arrives in Washington, what he hears around him and sees on his TV, the story about tweets about Mika Brzezinski."

"This will be the single most important national security set of decisions he's going to have to make, and literally, millions — I'm not exaggerating here, millions of lives in that part of the world possibly in the United States will be affected by what it is the United States does and doesn't do and how it does it," said Scarborough.

"The stakes couldn't be larger. And here we are, quite honestly, having this conversation."

About the tweets themselves, Brzezinski said the night she went to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort with Scarborough, she was there for about 20 minutes "and we left through this party of people dressed to the nines."

She did admit to having her "chin tweaked" but that she'd called her friends and told them.

"I'm pretty transparent about what I do, and I think it looks awesome," she said.

Brzezinski, though, said she is more concerned that the president is not dealing with "reality."

"You think about him responding to my tweaking him about the Time magazine covers, you think about that spooky cabinet meeting where everybody went around the table and complimented him," she said.

"This appears to be the man who requires his cabinet to speak at length about his greatness, especially in the middle of a presidency that appears to be struggling, low approval ratings, and very few accomplishments."

Scarborough, meanwhile, said he and Brzezinski have the "job of our dreams" and the "best life," and are "extraordinarily lucky" as there are people hurting in the United States because of healthcare, a crumbling infrastructure, and more, and "that's what matters" while the "partisanship is so harsh that Steve Scalise can get gunned down at a charity baseball practice and yet a week later, two weeks later, the president of the United States is amping things up, and making the political environment all the more dangerous."