Mika Brzezinski fired back at President Donald Trump on Friday, calling his recent Twitter attack on her "unbelievably alarming" and also claiming that Trump's White House said they could get a salacious story in the National Enquirer spiked by begging the president's forgiveness.
"It's been fascinating and frightening and really sad for our country," Brzezinski said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I'm very concerned as to what this once again reveals about the president of the United States. It's strange."
Brzezinski, who Trump attacked after she joked about his fake Time magazine cover on her Thursday show with co-host Joe Scarborough, claimed that the National Enquirer had been "harassing" her family while writing a story about her.
She and Scarborough alleged that members of the White House had told Scarborough to call Trump and apologize for their coverage in order to get the plug pulled on the National Enquirer story.
"I had three people at the very top of the administration calling me," Scarborough said. "The calls kept coming. They said, 'you need to call. Please call. Just pick up the phone and call him.'"
Brzezinski said her children were being harassed by the tabloid, which pinned the story on her ex-husband. Brzezinski said she knew that was a lie.
"My response was screw it. Let them run it,” she said.
NBC has reached out to the White House for comment.
Scarborough and Brzezinski first made the claims in a Friday morning op-ed in The Washington Post titled "Donald Trump Is Not Well."
"We are both certain that the man is not mentally equipped to continue watching our show," Brzezinski and Scarborough wrote in the Post. "It is disturbing that the president of the United States keeps up his unrelenting assault on women."
In the piece, the two also denounced Trump's specific claims that they visited him for three nights at his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago and that he refused to see them.
They also claimed Trump lied when he wrote Brzezinski was "bleeding badly from a facelift."
On "Morning Joe," Brzezinski made sure to explain that however "frightening" the president's attack was, it is not keeping her up at night.
"I'm fine. My family brought me up really tough," she added. "The president's tweets, that doesn't bother me one bit."
Brzezinski continued: "It is unbelievably alarming that this president is so easily played… by a cable news host. What is that saying to our allies, to our enemies?"
Scarborough joined Brzezinski on the broadcast, calling Trump "vicious."
"Unfortunatley, we learned what we always leanred: He for some reason he takes it so much perosnally with women. He is so much more vicious with women. For some reason, he always goes after Mika. It's always personal with Mika."
The hosts have said they've known Trump for over a decade, but Scarborough added that the former businessman has changed.
"The guy that’s in the White House now is not the guy we knew two years ago," he said.
Willie Geist hosted the MSNBC broadcast, as Brzezinski and Scarborough were scheduled to take time off beginning on Friday. He opened the show by addressing the controversy and offering support for his MSNBC colleague.
"She does not need me or anyone else to defend her," Geist said of Brzezinski before her last-minute appearance. "She's smart. She's strong. She makes people in power feel uncomfortable, and she fears absolutely no one."
Much of Friday's show was dedicated to the tweets, with Geist and various panelists describing the president as insecure, childish and impulsive. They addressed Washington directly numerous times, demanding politicians to stand up against Trump and calling for an apology and retraction from the president. They even debated how the tweets could affect foreign relations and the ongoing health care battle.
Trump had mocked the two "Morning Joe" co-hosts through his personal Twitter account on Thursday, calling them "Crazy Mika" and "Psycho Joe." He addressed Brzezinski specifically, criticizing her personal appearance as "bleeding badly from a facelift."
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Though Trump fired off the tweets while Brzezinski was on the air, she did not respond at the time beyond tweeting an image of a Cheerios box, in a tweak about the size of the president's hands.
Trump's tweets drew heated responses from politicians on both sides of the aisle saying the president crossed a line. House Speaker Paul Ryan called the messages "not appropriate," while several congressmen added that they were sexist and beneath the dignity of his office.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the president's actions, saying he had the right to fight back.
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"I think that he's been very clear that when he gets attacked, he's going to hit back," Sanders said at the daily White House press briefing. "I don't think that it's a surprise to anybody that he fights fire with fire."
MSNBC spokesperson Lorie Acio responded as well, saying, "It's a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job."
Trump himself has not responded to the backlash.
Photo Credit: Evan Vucci/AP, File
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