Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough claim Trump tried to blackmail them

Morning Joe hosts.
(Image credit: Screenshot/MSNBC)

On Friday, Morning Joe co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough published an op-ed titled "Donald Trump is not well," spurred by the president's vicious Twitter attacks on Brzezinski on Thursday. In the piece, the hosts revealed that "this year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas."

While Brzezinski and Scarborough did not expand beyond that tantalizing detail in their op-ed, they did on Friday morning's Morning Joe. "We got a call that, hey, the National Enquirer is going to run a negative story against you guys," Scarborough alleged. "And [Trump] is friends with the guy who runs the National Enquirer. And they said, if you call the president up and you apologize for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone and basically spike the story."

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.