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Republican congressman begs Trump to stop promoting baseless Scarborough murder conspiracy: 'You will destroy us'

President appeared with couple on several occasions: YouTube
President appeared with couple on several occasions: YouTube

A Republican congressman has pleaded with Donald Trump to stop “creating paranoia” by spreading a false murder conspiracy theory about an MSNBC host.

The intervention by Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger on Sunday came just hours after the US president tweeted for the sixth time this month about the baseless claims.

“A lot of interest in this story about Psycho Joe Scarborough,” Mr Trump tweeted of Joe Scarborough, a prominent Trump critic and former Republican congressman.

“So a young marathon runner just happened to faint in his office, hit her head on his desk, & die? I would think there is a lot more to this story than that? An affair? What about the so-called investigator? Read story!”

Mr Trump’s insinuations refer to the 2001 death of Lori Klausutis, who at the time worked in Mr Scarborough’s congressional office in Florida.

Klausutis’ death, however, is considered no mystery. An autopsy revealed she had an undiagnosed heart condition, with the coroner concluding she passed out and fatally struck her head as she fell.

Mr Scarborough was also not in Florida when the incident happened.

“Completely unfounded conspiracy. Just stop. Stop spreading it, stop creating paranoia. It will destroy us,” Mr Kinzinger later tweeted.

It was not clear if Mr Kinzinger was suggesting the destruction of the Republican Party or the country.

Brit Hume, a prominent personality on pro-Trump news network Fox News, also criticised the president for tweeting “crap”.

“30K retweets for this discredited tale, based on a three-year old post from some wing-ding website,” Mr Hume tweeted. “This is why even his critics should want DJT to play a lot of golf, because when he does, he's not tweeting crap like this.”

Mr Scarborough, and his wife and co-host Mika Brzezinski, did not respond to Mr Trump’s latest tweet. Last week, Ms Brzezinski appealed to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to ban the president from the site.

On Sunday, she posted an image of the front page of The New York Times showing the names of 1,000 of the approximately 100,000 Americans to have died.

“#Trump100K This human catastrophe did not have to be so bad,” she wrote. “History will not look kindly at the botched response to repeated warnings over the course of months that this pandemic was coming.”

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