MSNBC's Morning Joe and Mika slam GOP and Fox News 'sleaze merchants' slandering slain journalist as terrorist

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski slammed the "sleaze merchants" on Capitol Hill and Fox News pushing a whisper campaign against disappeared journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The "Morning Joe" hosts played a clip from Fox News showing the hosts pushing rumors that the Washington Post journalist was a terrorist sympathizer, which they admitted had little basis in fact.

"'I'm putting it in the mix, I'm just putting it out there, I'm just saying, like, I'm just putting it out there,'" Brzezinski said. "A complete lie. I'm just going to put it out there because that's my responsibility, to lie. That's incredibly irresponsible."

Scarborough agreed the claims against Khashoggi were a "complete lie," and he shamed President Donald Trump's allies for spreading those rumors as the Saudis apparently engage in a coverup of their involvement in his death.

"What the sleaze merchants on talk radio and other outlets are doing, they give sleazy a bad name," Scarborough said. "They're actually saying that he's affiliated with al-Qaeda because he was a reporter, like a lot of reporters who reported on Osama bin Laden in the 80s and the 90s and the Mujahidin."

"It's incredible," he added. "I guess if people want to ask how low the far right, the sleaze merchants can go, this is a pretty good place to start. This is a pretty good case study."