--- title: Donald Trump 'Face-Lift' Tweet Fits in Presidential History description: Historians Robert Dallek helps TIME put Donald Trump's tweets about Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski into historical context. canonical: https://time.com/4839910/donald-trump-morning-joe-history/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-06-29T21:15:51.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T06:15:16.000Z article:section: History og:title: Donald Trump 'Face-Lift' Tweet Fits in Presidential History og:description: It's not necessarily what Trump said that makes his comments unusual, but how he chose to say it og:url: https://time.com/4839910/donald-trump-morning-joe-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbef2decea3e30356/6988d40c0b72e321096ee75f/trump1.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Donald Trump og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Donald Trump 'Face-Lift' Tweet Fits in Presidential History twitter:description: It's not necessarily what Trump said that makes his comments unusual, but how he chose to say it twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbef2decea3e30356/6988d40c0b72e321096ee75f/trump1.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Where President Trump's 'Face-Lift' Tweets Fit in Presidential History > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Updated: Dec 13, 2023 6:15 AM UTCPublished: Jun 29, 2017 9:15 PM UTC  U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to speak at the Energy Department in Washington, DC, on June 29, 2017. U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to speak at the Energy Department in Washington, DC, on June 29, 2017. Nicholas Kamm—AFP/Getty Images  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Updated: Dec 13, 2023 6:15 AM UTCPublished: Jun 29, 2017 9:15 PM UTC On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump came under fire for [describing](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/880408582310776832) Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the hosts of MSNBC’s _Morning Joe_, as “Psycho Joe” and “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” and [claiming](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/880410114456465411) that he declined to spend time with them at Mar-a-Lago around New Year’s Eve and that she was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” at the time. The President’s tweets — which are [considered](http://time.com/4808270/sean-spicer-donald-trump-twitter-statements/) official presidential statements — quickly drew backlash [from Brzezinski ](http://time.com/4838899/donald-trump-twitter-morning-joe-mike-brzezinski/)herself, Trump’s[ fellow Republicans](http://time.com/4839060/donald-trump-republican-senators-mika-brzezinski-tweet/) and [others,](http://time.com/4838916/j-k-rowling-donald-trump-abraham-lincoln-quote/) many of whom said that a statement like that is “beneath the office,” as Sen. Lindsey Graham put it, and[ rare in presidential history.](https://twitter.com/stengel/status/880464848542474240) But, in the scope of that history, it’s not necessarily what Trump said that makes his comments unusual, but how he chose to say it. Twitter, in short, allows the President to broadcast to the world the kinds of things that his predecessors said privately, or at least through the [filter](http://time.com/4606413/donald-trump-white-house-press-briefings/) of the press. “Presidents make unpleasant remarks about people all of the time, but not publicly,” says Robert Dallek, a presidential historian who has written biographies of Presidents Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy, “LBJ did, JFK did, Franklin Roosevelt did. If you listen to the [Richard Nixon tapes,](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/politics/11nixon.html) you’re going to hear some very ugly things about Jews. There was a lot of anger that they \[these presidents\] had.” President Harry S. Truman was known for using strong language, too. Joel K. Goldstein, a scholar of the vice-presidency and professor of law at Saint Louis University School of Law, points to a [letter](https://www.trumanlibrary.org/trivia/letter.htm) that Truman wrote to the Washington _Post_‘s music critic Paul Hume, who wrote a “lousy” Dec. 6, 1950, review of his daughter Margaret Truman’s singing at Constitution Hall: “It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful,” the President wrote. “When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for, it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work. Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes.” In addition, a year after Truman died, [TIME reported](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,908217,00.html) that he once said he fired Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander of Korea simply because he wouldn’t respect his authority, adding, “I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was.” Presidential vituperation isn’t a modern phenomenon. For instance, John Adams described the late Alexander Hamilton in an 1806 [letter](https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5152) as having been full of “a superabundance of secretions which he could not find Whores enough to draw off.” But, when Presidents have made even far more mild criticisms public, the backlash has, in the past, been quick. For instance, Dallek says that JFK, faced with what his administration called [“patently false articles”](https://books.google.com/books?id=w3oiOriupLwC&pg=PT390&dq=john+f.+kennedy+new+york+herald+tribune+subscriptions+dallek&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjTle3o3-PUAhUF3SYKHdT-AkMQ6AEIJDAA#v=onepage&q=john%20f.%20kennedy%20new%20york%20herald%20tribune%20subscriptions%20dallek&f=false) in the New York _Herald_ _Tribune_, said of the paper that he was “reading more, and enjoying it less” and canceled the White House subscription — only to find himself the target of criticism from those who felt he should show more respect for the role of the media in society. (He later said that he had been wrong to cancel the subscription.) And criticism of individual citizens can get the President in even more hot water, as Barack Obama [discovered](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/us/politics/25gates.html). But all of that was before Twitter. Thanks to the President’s unique use of the service, thoughts that were once revealed privately can be easily broadcast to the public — for better or worse. And that does make statements like the President’s “face-lift” tweet a new kind of political discourse. In fact, not even the controversial President Andrew Jackson, [one of Trump’s favorite historical figures,](http://time.com/4747019/donald-trump-history-first-100-days/) spoke like that publicly, according to Daniel Feller, director of [The Papers of Andrew Jackson](http://thehermitage.com/learn/andrew-jackson/jacksons-papers/) and a professor of history at the University of Tennessee. “Jackson especially despised criticism of women,” Feller says, “which he thought was cowardly.” _Correction: The original version of this article misstated when Truman wrote a letter to the_ Washington Post’s _music critic. 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