MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski ripped the White House over a recent lawsuit that accuses Fox News of fabricating a story with President Trump’s approval. “We’re in a really bad place, Scarborough said on Wednesday’s show. “They lied.”
A lawsuit filed on Tuesday morning by a Fox News contributor claims the network worked with a wealthy Trump donor to fabricate a story about former DNC staffer Seth Rich’s murder, with the approval of the White House and President Trump directly.
Scarborough mocked former Press Secretary Sean Spicer by playing video of him denying knowledge of the story during a May press briefing, followed by noting that he confirmed meeting key figures from the lawsuit.
Brzezinski offered advice to Spicer’s replacement, Sarah Huckabee Sanders: “If you lie, it does come back.”
Longtime Fox News contributor Rod Wheeler says in the suit that Fox News and the wealthy Trump supporter wanted to shift public attention away from Russia, and that in order to do so, they made up quotes to help the narrative. It also claims that Trump wanted the story published “immediately.” The suit says that an article by Malia Zimmerman was published to “establish that Seth Rich provided WikiLeaks with the DNC emails to shift the blame from Russia.”
Fox News president Jay Wallace provided the following statement to TheWrap: “The accusation that FoxNews.com published Malia Zimmerman’s story to help detract from coverage of the Russia collusion issue is completely erroneous. The retraction of this story is still being investigated internally and we have no evidence that Rod Wheeler was misquoted by Zimmerman. Additionally, FOX News vehemently denies the race discrimination claims in the lawsuit — the dispute between Zimmerman and Rod Wheeler has nothing to do with race.”
The “Morning Joe” panel seemed legitimately disgusted by the situation, calling it “sick.”
Check out the video above.