President Trump responded to NBC’s firing of Matt Lauer on Wednesday by lashing out at “Fake News” and calling for an investigation into the network’s chairman Andrew Lack and MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough over an “unsolved mystery.”
“Wow, Matt Lauer was just fired from NBC for “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.” But when will the top executives at NBC & Comcast be fired for putting out so much Fake News. Check out Andy Lack’s past!,” Trump wrote on Twitter just minutes after news broke about the “Today” host.
Ninety minutes later, Trump sent out another tweet about Lauer’s dismissal and focused on MSNBC.
“So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the “unsolved mystery” that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!,” Trump wrote, referring to Griffin, the president of MSNBC.
The comment about Scarborough apparently refers to Lori Klausutis, an 28-year-old intern for Scarborough who was found dead in his Florida congressional office in July 2001.
The medical examiner concluded in a report issued the next month that Klausutis passed out because of a heart condition and fell, hitting her head on a desk.
The head injury caused her death, The St. Petersburg Times reported.
Lauer, the longtime host of the “Today” show, was fired over allegations he sexually harassed a colleague, Lack said in a memo.
The accusation “represented, after serious review, a clear violation of our company’s standards. As a result, we’ve decided to terminate his employment,” the note said.
Lauer’s firing comes as a number of high-profile political, Hollywood and media figures – including Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin, Sen. Al Franken and Rep. John Conyers – have been accused of sexual misconduct.
Trump also faced accusations from 13 women during the presidential campaign that he had touched them inappropriately.
The president was also caught on an “Access Hollywood” tape describing how he could grope women and “when you’re a star, they let you do it.”
But the New York Times reported on Tuesday that Trump has told a Republican lawmaker and some White House aides that the voice on the tape wasn’t his.
Last October when the 2005 tape surfaced, Trump dismissed his comments as “locker room talk.”