Two US television hosts attacked by Donald Trump on Twitter have questioned his mental health.
They also claimed that the White House had tried unsuccessfully to get them to apologise to the president for unfavourable coverage in exchange for him getting a negative tabloid story about them killed.
"He appears to have a fragile, impetuous, child-like ego that we've seen over and over again, especially with women," Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC's 'Morning Joe'. said on the programme.
"He attacks women because he fears women," added co-host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican US congressman.
Ms Brzezinski and Mr Scarborough responded to Mr Trump’s scathing attack of them on Twitter yesterday both on their programme and in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.
Mr Trump called Ms Brzezinski "low I.Q. Crazy Mika" and alleged that she was "bleeding badly from a face-lift" when she visited his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida around New Year's Eve.
He called Mr Scarborough "Psycho Joe".
Mr Scarborough said Mr Trump packed "five or six lies into two tweets," including mischaracterising their meetings at Mar-a-Lago.
Ms Brzezinski said she has never had a face-lift.
Presidential counsellor Kellyanne Conway, speaking on ABC's 'Good Morning America', defended Mr Trump's "ability to fight back when he is attacked".
She declined to endorse the content of his tweets.
"Well it's incredible to watch people play armchair psychologist, outright ridiculing the president's physicalities, his mental state, calling him names that you won't want your children to call people on a playground," Ms Conway told Fox News.
Mr Trump's tweets, his latest attacks on the US news media, were roundly condemned by politicians in both parties and became a distraction as his fellow Republicans in the Senate try to iron out their differences over major healthcare legislation.
Ms Brzezinski and Mr Scarborough, who were on friendly terms with Mr Trump in the past but have been critical of him since he took office in January, described White House pressure over a planned negative story about them in the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper.
Mr Trump is friends with David Pecker, chief executive of the National Enquirer's parent company, American Media, Inc. The tabloid specialises in scandalous stories about celebrities and has been supportive of Mr Trump.
"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. We ignored their desperate pleas," Ms Brzezinski and Mr Scarborough wrote in the Post.
Mr Scarborough said on 'Morning Joe' that he received calls from three top administration officials asking the co-hosts to call Mr Trump and apologise for their coverage of his administration.
They told him that if he called and apologised, Mr Trump would get the story killed, Mr Scarborough said. He did not identify the administration officials.
"The calls kept coming, and kept coming. And they were like 'Call, you need to call. Please call. Come on, Joe. Just pick up the phone and call him'," Mr Scarborough said.
"That's blackmail," said MSNBC panelist Donny Deutsch.
In a Twitter post today, Mr Trump gave a different account, saying Mr Scarborough "called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no!"
Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017
American Media said in a statement "we have no knowledge of any discussions between the White House and Joe and Mika about our story, and absolutely no involvement in those discussions".
"I am very concerned as to what this once again reveals about the president of the United States," Ms Brzezinski said of Mr Trump's Twitter attacks.
"President Trump launched personal attacks against us Thursday, but our concerns about his unmoored behaviour go far beyond the personal. America's leaders and allies are asking themselves yet again whether this man is fit to be president," the co-hosts wrote in the Post column.
