Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images
Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and his four years in office contained so much daily weirdness, wackiness, and horror that the human brain couldn’t comprehend it all. As Trump gets close to the White House again, “That Happened” brings you the surreal moments you might have forgotten — or blocked from your memory.
Donald Trump has often marked Memorial Day in ways that suggest he may not fully embrace the meaning of the holiday, which commemorates those who died while serving in the U.S. military. In 2018, he used the holiday to promote himself:
And last year he honored service members who made the “ultimate sacrifice” alongside those who are fighting the “TERRORISTS, MISFITS AND LUNATIC THUGS WHO ARE WORKING FEVERISHLY FROM WITHIN TO OVERTURN AND DESTROY OUR ONCE GREAT COUNTRY.”
Incredibly, these bizarre posts aren’t Trump’s most appalling Memorial Day messaging. Back in 2020, Trump took some time out of his holiday weekend to not-so-subtly suggest that Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough murdered a staffer during his time as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives:
Trump was alluding to the tragic death of Lori Klausutis, who was found dead in Scarborough’s Fort Walton Beach, Florida, congressional office in 2001. Trump first insinuated that Scarborough had something to do with it in this 2017 tweet:
But as the AP explained at the time, there was no “unsolved mystery”:
An autopsy revealed that Klausutis had an undiagnosed heart condition and a coroner concluded she passed out and hit her head as she fell. The coroner said the head injury caused the death, but she wasn’t struck by another person.
The death occurred a month after Scarborough announced he was leaving office. Scarborough was in Washington when Klausutis died.
Klausutis was 28, happily married, and working as a constituent services coordinator in Scarborough’s office when she died. Local officials said from the start that there was nothing suspicious about her death. But the story still sparked wild rumors and speculation, years before Trump entered politics. In 2020, the Washington Post attributed this to the political and media climate at the time of Klausutis’s death:
But Klausutis’s death occurred while the nation was caught up in speculation about the disappearance of Bureau of Prisons intern Chandra Levy and her ties to Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif). Soon the stories merged in the public’s mind, with some labeling Scarborough the Republican Condit (who was never charged with any crime).
Posts on such sites as Truthout and the liberal Daily Kos all but accused Scarborough of murder. Filmmaker Michael Moore talked about registering the domain name “JoeScarboroughKilledHisIntern.com.” Rumors claimed her death had something to do with the 2000 election or 9/11 or that it had prompted Scarborough to resign from Congress two months afterward — although Scarborough had announced his resignation before her death. He married his second wife, a Jeb Bush fundraiser named Susan Waren, shortly after his September resignation took effect.
Trump loves conspiracy theories and hates his former friend Scarborough, so it makes sense that he eventually became the story’s most high-profile promoter. Though Trump’s allegations against the MSNBC host were widely debunked following his 2017 tweet, he started pushing the story aggressively in spring 2020. (It’s not like there was a raging pandemic that required his attention or anything.) He posted tweets referencing the “Florida Cold Case” and its connection to “Psycho Joe Scarborough” at least eight times in April and May of that year. For example:
Soon, even a few elected Republicans and conservative outlets were calling on Trump to stop smearing Scarborough; the Washington Examiner said the president needed to stop spreading “vile slander” and the Wall Street Journal editorial board called the attacks “ugly even for him.” But Trump just kept tweeting.
Lori Klausutis’s family tried to make social-media companies rein Trump in. On May 21, 2020, her widower, Timothy Klausutis, sent then–Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey an emotional letter asking him to delete Trump’s tweets. He wrote that, “conspiracy theories, including most recently the President of the United States, continue to spread their bile and misinformation on your platform disparaging the memory of my wife and our marriage.”
Though a Twitter spokesperson acknowledged that Trump’s false statements were painful to Klausutis’s family, the company refused to take down the posts.
Facebook kept Trump’s posts up too, telling CNN: “We do not remove political speech solely because people may find it offensive, as this content understandably is to the family of Lori Klausutis and others. Speech from candidates and heads of state is among the most scrutinized content on our platform, which helps ensure people are held accountable for their words.”
But to this date, Trump hasn’t really been “held accountable” for spreading these appalling lies. During a May 26, 2020, White House press conference, Trump brushed aside Klausutis’s letter, saying of the family, “I’m sure that, ultimately, they want to get to the bottom of it, and it’s a very serious situation.”
Trump even repeated his online suggestions that Scarborough might be a murderer as he spoke to reporters at the White House Rose Garden. Per a CNN transcript:
QUESTION: The woman who died, who you’re suggesting that Joe Scarborough was responsible —
TRUMP: Yes, a lot of people suggest that, and hopefully someday people are going to find out. Certainly, a very suspicious situation, very sad, very sad and very suspicious. Question, please?
Though Trump’s Twitter and Facebook accounts were suspended after the Capitol riot, they have now been reinstated.
Trump once tweeted that he saw Scarborough’s wife and co-host, Mika Brzezinski, “bleeding badly from a face-lift.” But Scarborough has said the murder accusations were the only thing that really “upset” them and that they “caused the family terrible pain.” In a 2021 Times Radio interview, Scarborough said he considered suing Trump but was told Trump was protected by presidential immunity.
“I think there may be a challenge there. I may sue him in the future,” Scarborough said. “I am going to go back to the lawyer after he leaves office and I’m going to make sure — because why should a president be immune from a lawsuit if he does something like that?”
Scarborough has yet to sue, and Trump’s claims of presidential immunity are currently before the Supreme Court. While Trump has toned down his attacks on the Morning Joe hosts in recent years, he still subtly calls Scarborough a “killer” from time to time.
