Trump accidentally confesses to blackmail scheme against Morning Joe hosts

President Donald Trump on Friday fired back at the hosts of MSNBC's Morning Joe program.

Specifically, the president responded to allegations that the White House asked co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski to apologize personally to Trump for their negative coverage of him in exchange for him telling the National Enquirer to back off of a negative story planned about the couple.

"Watched low rated Morning Joe for first time in long time," Trump said. "FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show."

Joe Scarborough quickly shot back at Trump on Twitter -- and claimed that he had a paper trail to back up his version of events.

"I have texts from your top aides and phone records," he wrote. "Also, those records show I haven't spoken with you in many months. Why do you keep lying about things that are so easily disproven? What is wrong with you?"

In a Washington Post editorial published Friday, Scarborough and Brzezinski revealed that the White House earlier this year contacted them about a purportedly scandalous story that would soon be published in the National Enquirer, whose boss David Pecker is a longtime Trump ally.

"This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked," they revealed. "We ignored their desperate pleas."