Watch: Joe Scarborough & Mika Brzezinski Claim Trump Attempted to Blackmail Them

We don’t need much background here—yesterday, you saw Trump tweet some particularly vulgar comments about the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe—which led to actual Republican congresspeople criticizing him—and today, he followed up with a second salvo:

Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017

This morning, Scarborough and Brzezinski responded to Trump on Morning Joe, alleging that White House intermediaries reached out to urge them to call Trump, saying that if they only “picked up the phone,” the president would spike a negative Enquirer story that was in the works. (An important side note here is that Trump is friends with that paper’s CEO.) They refused, and a campaign of harassment that included Brzezinski’s teenage daughters continued. Watch them describe the situation here:

This is a chilling story. https://t.co/HYJgBnajOy via @Morning_Joehttps://t.co/6UCEHzfOET

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 30, 2017

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Scarborough also responded to Trump on Twitter:

Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records. Also, those records show I haven’t spoken with you in many months. https://t.co/TZWiElo6Gs

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) June 30, 2017

So basically, if you believe them, Trump held a negative Enquirer story over their heads, and demanded a groveling phone call in return.

This is the point at which we’d usually make a joke about how this man is in charge of our nuclear arsenal, but it’s honestly beyond that—we have a truly terrifying, petty man in charge of our country, and it’s an absolute disgrace.