Kushner told ‘Morning Joe’ hosts to apologize to Trump or tabloid story would run: report

President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, told “Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski they would need to apologize to Trump in order to avoid the National Enquirer publishing a story about their relationship, New York Magazine reported Friday.

The magazine reports that Kushner texted with Scarborough about the tabloid story before it ran in mid-April. Kushner said the story could be stopped if Scarborough and his co-host, who are engaged to be married, apologized to Trump for their negative coverage of his first months in the White House.

After Scarborough refused, the National Enquirer ran a story on June 5 titled “Joe & Mika: TV Couple’s Sleazy Cheating Scandal.”

{mosads}The incident was originally revealed in a joint op-ed by Scarborough and Brzezinski in The Washington Post on Friday titled “Donald Trump is not well.”

In the article, the two write that Trump’s “unhealthy obsession with ‘Morning Joe’ does not serve the best interests of either his mental state or the country he runs.”

“We believe it would be better for America and the rest of the world if he would keep his 60-inch-plus flat-screen TV tuned to “Fox and Friends,” they added.

The two also ripped Trump for his “schoolyard insults,” referring to Trump attacking Brzezinski in a pair of tweets Thursday morning.

Trump called Brzezinski unintelligent and crazy and said “she was bleeding badly from a face-lift” during a visit to Mar-a-Lago in an attack that drew rebuke from both Democrats and Republicans. 

In a new tweet Friday, Trump said he refused to stop the Enquirer story.

Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017

In a statement to New York Magazine, the Enquirer said, “We have no knowledge of any discussions between the White House and Joe and Mika about our story, and absolutely no involvement in those discussions.”