MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough has officially left the Republican party.
The “Morning Joe” anchor tweeted a photo of himself with an elections official in New Canaan, Connecticut on Thursday adding that he became an independent.
Actually, that’s New Canaan Registrar of Voters John Amarilios after I became an unaffiliated voter. ??https://t.co/30hmC2EkDE
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) October 12, 2017
“I became an independent today,” Scarborough tweeted, jokingly adding, “Here I am holding a copy of Donald Trump’s birth certificate, proving he was born in Nambia.”
Scarborough followed up with a more serious tweet. “Actually, that’s New Canaan Registrar of Voters John Amarilios after I became an unaffiliated voter,” he wrote on his repost.
In July, Scarborough announced that he would leave the GOP and accused Republicans of abandoning their principles.
Trump, who often decries what he calls “fake news” in the American media took fierce aim in June at the hosts of the “Morning Joe.”
The Republican president called Scarborough’s cohost and fiancée Mika Brzezinski, a journalist and daughter of former White House national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” and said she was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” when she visited his Mar-A-Lago estate around New Year’s Eve.
He referred to Scarborough as “Psycho Joe.” Scarborough was elected to four U.S. House terms from Florida starting in 1994.
“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,” MSNBC’s communications office said on Twitter.
Trump has sometimes singled out individual journalists, including a high-profile attack while he was running for office on former Fox News and current NBC journalist Megyn Kelly. That included a comment about “blood coming out of her wherever,” which was widely interpreted as a reference to menstruation.
Trump has been criticized in the past for his comments about women. He attacked Kelly after she asked him during a presidential debate about his previous references to some women as “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”
Trump apologized last October, just before the election, after a 2005 video surfaced in which he said he could grab women by their genitals whenever he wanted because he was a star.
Reuters contributed to this report.
