Mika Brzezinksi had sharply criticised his administration

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday launched a brutal personal attack on MSNBC journalist Mika Brzezinski, after she sharply criticised his administration's dysfunction in a segment on her show.

“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore),” Mr. Trump wrote, referring to a morning news show featuring Ms. Brzezinski and co-host Joe Scarborough.

“Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” the President tweeted. Mr. Trump, an avid cable news watcher, appears to have been responding to sharp comments by Ms. Brzezinski during Thursday ‘Morning Joe’ program.

“Everybody in Washington,” Ms. Brzezinski said, “in the administration, needs to look at this from... a point of view where they’re not lobotomised because you’re sitting in there and you’re so scared of him, and you think you need to suck up to the president.”

Not afraid

If a boss at NBC “started tweeting wildly about people’s appearances, bullying people, talking about people in the competition, lying every day, undermining his managers, throwing them under the [bus]” — that person would be thrown out, Ms. Brzezinski said in the programme.

She appeared to be uncowed by Mr. Trump’s Twitter attack, responding to it with a post of her own, a photo of a young child reaching for Cheerios cereal. “Made for little hands,” the picture caption read — a schoolyard taunt that has been levelled against the image-conscious Trump since the days of his candidacy.