U.S. President Donald Trump lashed out at MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski Thursday, referring to them as “crazy” and “psycho,” while mocking them for having a “low I.Q.” and referred to Brzezinski as “bleeding badly” after having elective surgery.
Trump took to Twitter Thursday morning around 9 a.m. ET to call out the hosts of morning television show Morning Joe.
“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..” Trump tweeted. “…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”
White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders addressed the president’s tweets during Thursday’s daily briefing, saying the president isn’t going stand idly by when he’s attacked.
“I think it’s very clear that when he’s attacked, he’s going to hit back,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s a surprise to anybody that he fights fire with fire.”
WATCH: As Jackson Proskow reports, the White House is defending the tweets, despite sharp criticism from within Trump’s own party.
She explained that the show has personally attacked Trump along with many of his staff.
When asked if the tweet is in line with the dignity of a president, she again repeated that Trump would fight back against these types of attacks.
WATCH: Sarah Hucakabee-Sanders addresses Donald Trump’s twitter attacks on MSNBC’s morning show hosts
Brzezinski appeared to fire back at Trump by tweeting a photo of a box of Cheerios cereal which read “Made for Little Hands” – an apparent swipe at the size of Trump’s hands.
It’s unclear what prompted Trump to attack the MSNBC hosts, but during their show Wednesday the pair mocked the president following the revelations the Trump Organization was asked by Time magazine to remove fake covers of its magazine featuring Trump that were on display at several golf clubs owned by the president.
Brzezinski referred to the “phoney, fake, phoney, pathetic, made-up cover of Time” magazine as being “needy.”
On Thursday Brzezinski again mentioned the phoney magazine cover.
READ MORE: Trump Organization asked to remove fake Time magazine cover featuring Donald Trump
“Nothing makes a man feel better than making a fake cover of a magazine about himself, lying every day and destroying the country,” Brzezinski said.
She then goes on to suggest that Trump was covering his hands in photo “because they’re TEENSY.”
Trump’s tweets come after days of media criticism from the White House.
Earlier this week, the president called out CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times, calling the organizations “fake news.”
Trump used the resignations of three CNN journalists involved in a retracted Russia-related story to resume his attack on the network’s credibility Tuesday. The story was about a supposed investigation into a pre-inaugural meeting between a Trump associate and the head of a Russian investment fund. CNN accepted the journalists’ resignations Monday.
“Wow, CNN had to retract big story on ‘Russia,’ with 3 employees forced to resign. What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!” Trump tweeted.
“So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!”
In response to Trump’s outburst Thursday, senior vice-president of communications of NBCUniversal News Group Mark Kornblau tweeted: “Never imagined a day when I would think to myself, ‘it is beneath my dignity to respond to the President of the United States.’”
NBC News spokeswoman Lorie Acio also issued a statement calling it a “sad day for America.”
“It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job,” Acio said in a statement.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham reacted to Trump’s tweet calling it “beneath the office” of the president.
“Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America,” Graham tweeted.
Fellow Republican Ben Sasse echoed Graham’s remark, asking the president to “just stop.”
“Please just stop. This isn’t normal and it’s beneath the dignity of your office,” Sasse tweeted.
GOP Senator Susan Collins also called on Trump to stop the attacks on media.
“This has to stop – we all have a job – 3 branches of gov’t and media. We don’t have to get along, but we must show respect and civility,” Collins tweeted.
The White House defended Trump’s tweets, suggesting the president is a victim of bullying.
“I don’t think the president’s ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn’t push back,” Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in an interview with FOX News. “There have been an outrageous number of personal attacks, not just to him, but frankly to everyone around him…this is a president who fights fire with fire and certainly will not be allowed to be bullied by liberal media and the liberal elites within the media or Hollywood or anywhere else.”
First lady Melania Trump’s spokesperson defended the president’s attack on the media personalities.
“As the first lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder,” communications director Stephanie Grisham told CNN.
Comments