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https://twitter.com/keithellison/status/1265354025052114947

https://twitter.com/keithellison

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/trumps-slanderous-attack-on-joe-scarborough-is-incompatible-with-leadership

from article

first time i heard she was found next day

Nearly two decades ago, when Joe Scarborough was a conservative Republican member of Congress from Florida, his office suffered a tragedy. One of his staff, a 28-year-old woman, named Lori Klausutis, collapsed from a heart condition while working alone in his Fort Walton Beach, Florida, office.

As the medical examiner later reported, she hit her head in the process of fainting, and the blow killed her. When her body was found the following morning by a constituent arriving for an appointment — she never had the chance to lock up — there was no suspicion of foul play.

Unfortunately, in the minds of certain lunatics — especially disreputable, typically (but not always) anonymous online left-wingers itching to slander any available Republican politician — this became a hot new conspiracy theory. Scarborough, they theorized, must have been having an affair with the staffer in question, and he must have murdered her in order to cover it up. According to this tall tale, the controversy surrounding her death even forced Scarborough to leave Congress — so that just proves it, right?

This story is not just false, but verifiably so. It is also illogical and bizarre. For one thing, Scarborough wasn't even in Florida when this incident occurred. He took six votes on the House floor the day Klausutis died — the first at 10:25 a.m. and the last at 7:09 p.m. The following morning, he participated in another vote at 10:10 a.m.

Second, Scarborough had already announced his retirement from Congress long before Klausutis died, so there's nothing to that part of the story, either. And even after his departure from Congress, Scarborough hardly shrunk into the background as if to avoid the spotlight. The first episode of his new evening MSNBC show, Scarborough Country, broadcast three months after he left the House. It gave him a much higher profile than he'd ever had as an obscure congressman from North Florida.

There was also never any indication that Scarborough had any sort of improper relationship with Klausutis.

It is deeply unfortunate that certain loathsome individuals chose to amplify, repeat, or otherwise resurrect this tall tale, either as part of a bad-faith, cheap-shot ad hominem argument against Scarborough (as in the case of Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos) or else out of the same feverish kookery that motivates most conspiracy theorists.

But it is far, far more unfortunate that the latest person to trumpet and repeat this vile slander is the president supposedly leading this nation through a time of crisis.

Whatever his issues with Scarborough, President Trump's crazed Twitter rant on this subject was vile and unworthy of his office. Some will undoubtedly shrug it off as Trump being Trump, but one could hardly be blamed for reading it and doubting his fitness to lead.

To say Trump owes Scarborough an apology is to put it mildly. But in the end, Scarborough won't be the one hurt by this. Against a weak opponent, Trump somehow managed in 2016 to win despite carrying on with sad, deluded conspiracy theories about Sen. Ted Cruz's father being involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Against a less reviled opponent, he may not be so lucky in 2020.

And observers might even someday look back at this incident as the instant when things began to unravel.