White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany was forced to defend President Donald Trump’s recent attacks on MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Tuesday, an unenviable task she nevertheless intentionally signed up for. She desperately tried to divert the attention back to Scarborough — without engaging in the president’s conspiracy theorizing — but offered no credible defense of the president’s conduct.
Trump has been spreading the debunked theory that Scarborough killed a staffer in 2001 while he was in Congress, even though it was determined she died of natural causes. The staffer’s widower wrote a released a letter on Tuesday pleading with Twitter to take down the president’s offensive tweets promoting the thoery. He said he was “angry,” “frustrated,” and “grieved” by the president’s promotion of the harmful allegations. Trump is perverting his late wife’s memory, he said, and he fears her niece and nephews will encounter these attacks.
When asked about the letter, McEnany said she wasn’t sure if the president had seen it. But she said their “hearts” are with the woman’s family “at this time.” It was a deeply ironic comment because the only particularly traumatizing thing about “this time” for the family is the president’s attacks, which come nearly two decades after the woman’s death. Continue reading.