Trump Weighs In on Firing of Matt Lauer

Count President Trump among those surprised by the news that NBC has fired Matt Lauer over a sexual harassment complaint. "Wow," begins a tweet from Trump recounting the news. The president, however, then shifted the focus of the development into a favorite subject: "But when will the top executives at NBC & Comcast be fired for putting out so much Fake News. Check out Andy Lack's past!" Lack is chairman of NBC News, but it was unclear what Trump meant by the reference. Trump soon added a second tweet with more cryptic references. "When will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin?" he wrote, referring to the MSNBC president. "And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the 'unsolved mystery' that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!"

The latter is an apparent reference to the death of an intern in then-Congressman Scarborough's office in 2001. As a 2015 Gawker piece recounts, however, there's not much of a mystery involved. The medical examiner ruled that the 28-year-old died of natural causes: Heart problems caused her to fall and strike her head. As for Lack, the Hill notes that he and Trump both have histories with NBC, given Trump's own involvement with The Apprentice, which debuted in 2004 and ran for 14 seasons. Lack began working at NBC in 1993, though he left from 2003 to 2015, a stretch during which he ran Sony Music Entertainment. NBC wasn't the only news outlet tweaked by Trump. He tweeted "great" in response to the decision by CNN to boycott the White House Christmas party. "We should boycott Fake News CNN," Trump added. (More President Trump stories.)