Trump first tweeted the claim in 2017 about Lori Klausutis, who worked in Scarborough’s Fort Walton Beach congressional office. She was found dead in the office in 2001. Scarborough served in the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001 as a Republican for the 1st district of Florida.
Lori Klausutis
The coroner discovered an undiagnosed heart condition and reported that Klausutis passed out and hit her head as she fell. He said she was not struck by another person. Scarborough was in Washington, DC at the time of her death.
At the time of Trump’s comments, Scarborough was host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe alongside wife and co-host Mika Brzezinski, who was also personally targeted by Trump for “bleeding badly from a face-lift.”
So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the “unsolved mystery” that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!
Trump renewed attacks in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Concast” should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough. I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is “nuts”. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE
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!
At the time of the May 4 tweet, nearly 70,000 Americans had died of COVID-19. At the time of his May 12 tweet, it had reached over 80,000.
Scarborough responded on his show, in which he called the comments “extraordinarily cruel” and likened the claims to the Seth Rich conspiracy theories.
Michael Flynn is a retired United States Army Lieutenant General who served as National Security Advisor for Trump from January to February 2017.
Retired United States Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn / Wikipedia
As part of the wider Mueller probe into Russian election interference, a phone call from 2016 was unearthed between Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. After speaking with Trump’s Presidential Transition Team, Flynn had reached out to Kislyak after Obama’s passing of Russian sanctions as punishment for 2016 election interference. Flynn urged Russia to refrain from retaliatory measures, as Trump was already President-elect and could eventually undo the sanctions. The following day, the Russian government announced they would not retaliate. Trump tweeted praise for the decision:
Great move on delay (by V. Putin) – I always knew he was very smart!
In his recounting of the phone call to the FBI, Flynn denied anything substantive was discussed, including sanctions. Nonetheless, Trump asked Flynn for his resignation in February 2017. He had served as National Security Advisor for a record 24 days.
Trump still defended Flynn, claiming that his lies to the FBI were not about anything illegal, and so he should not be prosecuted for them.
I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!
Flynn was charged with perjury for his false explanation to the FBI, and in December 2017, pleaded guilty.
Flynn had also failed to register as a foreign agent for lobbying work he had done on behalf of the Turkish government. Through his Flynn Intel Group Inc, an organization that provides intelligence services to businesses and governments, Flynn worked to defend Turkish hardliner President Recep Erdoğan from anti-government elements. He also failed to disclose income from Russian companies in his financial disclosure forms.
Trump had been warned about Flynn’s conflicts of interest at least 6 separate times, including by Obama during the post-election transition. Obama had himself fired Flynn in 2014.
Despite having pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, sentencing was deferred multiple times until May 7, 2020, when the Justice Department announced that it would be dropping all charges. The explanation provided in the motion to dismiss was that “Mr. Flynn’s statements were never ‘material’ to any FBI investigation.”
Trump defended the move, claiming that Flynn, and by extension himself, had been unfairly targeted by the Obama administration:
He is an innocent man. He is a great gentleman. He was targeted by the Obama administration and he was targeted in order to try and take down a president and what they’ve done is a disgrace and I hope a big price is going to be paid. A big price should be paid. There’s never been anything like this in the history of our country. What they did, the Obama administration did, is unprecedented, never happened, a thing like this has never happened before in the history of our country. And I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price, because they’re dishonest crooked people, and they’re scum. I say it a lot, they’re scum. …Treason, it’s treason.
Throughout Flynn’s legal troubles, Trump has repeatedly defended him over Twitter:
Mike Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!
So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday “interrogation” with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times…and nothing happens to her? Rigged system, or just a double standard?
At an Alabama rally on September 23, 2017, Trump explained how he wanted to see NFL players fired for protesting the US flag and national anthem.
Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when someone disrespects our flag to say, ‘get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired!
Trump’s remarks came after dozens of players across the regular and preseasons took a knee during the national anthem. They had joined Colin Kaepernick in protest the season prior, who was not on an NFL roster at the time of Trump’s remarks.
Kaepernick explained that the reason for his protest was because he was “not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” He was advised to take a knee by NFL player and former US Army Green Beret Nate Boyer, who considered it a form of protest most respectful to other service members.
AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez
Trump praised a later NFL ban on kneeling players, suggesting such protests were un-American:
You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there, maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.
The remark came after Trump said he would “totally destroy” North Korea if the US had to defend itself, and referred to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as “rocket man,” in a speech to the United Nations.
Kim Jong-un issued a retort on North Korean state media in which he called Trump a “mentally deranged dotard.”
The statement continued, saying Trump was “unfit to hold the prerogative of supreme command of a country,” and was “a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire.”
When relations between the US and North Korea again started to worsen in 2019, the latter threatened the resumption of such insults.
Dotage is defined by Merriam-Websters as “a state or period of senile decay marked by decline of mental poise and alertness.”
According to the book A Very Stable Genius, during a private tour of the Pearl Harbor memorial, Trump asked his Chief of Staff John Kelly, “Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?”
The authors explain that Trump didn’t grasp the site’s significance, as he’d “heard the phrase ‘Pearl Harbor’ and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle…he did not seem to know much else.”
In a tweet the same day of his visit, Trump repeated a common misquote of Franklin Roosevelt’s description of the Pearl Harbor attack, “a date that will live in infamy.”
National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day – “A day that will live in infamy!” December 7, 1941
After taking office, Trump formed the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity by executive order to investigate the alleged mass fraud. Vice President Mike Pence led the commission.
Trump Signs Executive Order establishing a voter fraud commission on May 11, 2017. Wikipedia
Multiple lawsuits were filed by organizations including the ACLU and Electronic Privacy Information Center, as well as one of the commission’s own members. The suits alleged lack of transparency and blatant partisanship.
The commission ran from May 11, 2017 to January 3, 2018, when it was disbanded after having found no evidence of the claimed voter fraud.
The commission member who filed suit, Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, later explained, “even though the idea was to investigate voter fraud, it is pretty clear that the purpose of the commission was to actually affirm and validate the president’s claims whether or not we had any evidence of any such voter misconduct.”
Nevertheless, Trump continued to repeat his claims of mass voter fraud. The same year that the commission was disbanded, Trump justified voter ID laws by claiming that Americans need photo ID even to buy groceries. He also later accused mail-in-voting as being a vehicle for fraud, alleging that implementing such measures amid the COVID-19 crisis would mean no Republican would ever be elected again.
Trump made the claim immediately after his inauguration. All evidence pointed to the contrary. Sean Spicer defended the claim the day after, as well as other unfounded claims about voter fraud.
During a May 2017 NATO summit, Trump pushed his way past the prime minister of Montenegro to stand in front of the group of leaders.
Trump has also referred to the people of Montenegro as “very aggressive,” and warned that the Balkan country of under 700,000 people could ignite World War 3.
Trump broke golf etiquette when he drove a cart across the greens at the Bedminister golf club in New Jersey. In fairness to the President, he owned the club, though others have noted that it is a regular habit. Even when meeting with other foreign leaders, he preferred taking a golf cart alone rather than walking with the others.
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