President Trump on Tuesday morning lashed out at MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, saying “Morning Joe & Psycho ratings have really crashed” while adding “when the show was sane, they helped me get elected.”
“Wow! Morning Joe & Psycho ratings have really crashed. Very small audience,” Trump tweeted. “People are tired of hearing Fake News delivered with an anger that is not to be believed. Sad, when the show was sane, they helped get me elected. Thanks! Was on all the time. Lost all of its juice!”
Not long after, Trump tweeted that he had “reminded my staff that Morning Joe & Psycho were with me in my room, at their request, the night I won New Hampshire.”
Brzezinski and Scarborough told Vanity Fair in a 2017 profile that both Trump and White House adviser Jared Kushner had offered to perform their wedding shortly after the president’s inauguration.
Trump appeared regularly on the show in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election before a public spat with the hosts. According to Nielsen ratings from March, the show has seen a 10 percent increase in ratings over the first quarter of 2018.
{mosads}Scarborough, a former congressman who left the GOP in 2017 because of his opposition to Trump, and Brzezinski are frequent critics of the president and Republicans.
On Friday, Scarborough lashed out at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), calling him “Moscow Mitch” over his inaction on legislation to address Russian election interference and sparking a viral hashtag.
Scarborough last week also tweeted during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony, which detailed his probe into Russian election interference and possible obstruction of justice by Trump, asking to be forgiven for his previous party affiliation.
“Jesus, forgive me for ever being a Republican,” the former four-term Florida congressman said during the hearing.
Brzezinski in April criticized the president for his policies, saying that the Mueller report demonstrated Trump’s “unfit, impeachable behavior.”
Trump has frequently described media coverage he deems unfavorable as “fake news.”
Earlier this week, he attacked activist and MSNBC host Al Sharpton after Sharpton tweeted that he was on his way to Baltimore for a news conference that ended up focused on the president’s recent tweets blasting House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings’s (D-Md.) district, which includes part of Baltimore.
Trump also attacked Brzezinski personally in 2017, tweeting that she was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” when he saw her at his Florida resort.
—Updated at 10:12 a.m.