Mitt Romney to Trump: Stop ‘Vile, Baseless’ Accusations Against Scarborough

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) on Wednesday urged President Donald Trump to cease pushing the conspiracy theory alleging MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough murdered his one-time aide, calling the accusations “vile” and “baseless.”

“I know Joe Scarborough. Joe is a friend of mine. I don’t know T.J. Klausutis,” Romney wrote on Twitter, referring to the widower of staffer Lori Klausutis, who died in 2001 when a heart condition caused her to lose consciousness and smash her head on a desk.

“Joe can weather vile, baseless accusations but T.J.? His heart is breaking. Enough already,” the Utah Republican added.

Romney’s tweet came as President Trump alleged, without evidence, that Klausutis’s death was “a Cold Case” that would come back to haunt Scarborough.

“Psycho Joe Scarborough is rattled, not only by his bad ratings but all of the things and facts that are coming out on the internet about opening a Cold Case. He knows what is happening!” the president tweeted.

On Tuesday, T.J. penned a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, in which he pleaded for the social media platform to remove President Trump’s tweet about his late wife. Twitter, in turn, apologized for the president’s tweet, though it opted against removing them.

Twitter’s apology came as the Silicon Valley giant slapped a fact-check label on President Trump’s recent tweets about the connection between vote-by-mail and voter fraud. The move prompted the president to threaten to regulate or shut down social media companies.

The president tweeted: “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again. Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!”