WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump personally mocked television host Mika Brzezinski in vulgar terms on Twitter, drawing quick condemnations from leading Republicans as he once again generated a controversy while his White House struggles to get traction on its agenda.
As Brzezinski's MSNBC show "Morning Joe" came to a close about 9 a.m., Trump insulted Brzezinski and her co-host Joe Scarborough, calling them "low I.Q. Crazy Mika" and "Psycho Joe," adding that he had at one point seen Brzezinski "bleeding badly from a face-lift."
The tweets were the latest in a barrage of attacks by Trump and his White House against media organizations, including CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, which he has accused of publishing false stories critical of his administration.
They came at an especially fraught time for the administration, and Republican congressional leaders moved quickly to repudiate his words. The reaction underscored the increasing sense on Capitol Hill that members of his party increasingly have little fear of publicly contradicting the president. Recent polling has shown that even among Republican voters, many view his tweets as a distraction.
"This has to stop _ we all have a job _ 3 branches of gov't and media. We don't have to get along, but we must show respect and civility," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, wrote on Twitter.
"Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America," tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
The incident was hardly the first time that Trump's Twitter messages have jolted the capital, but the context was different this time, as the administration struggles to win Senate votes for a health care overhaul bill, faces a critical point in the fight against Islamic State militias in Iraq and Syria, and tries to deal with an escalating nuclear threat from North Korea, not to mention the continuing investigations into Russia's meddling with the election and possible involvement by people close to the president.
The White House had tried to had billed this week as "Energy Week" as a way to discuss how the administration was working to bolster the U.S. oil, gas and coal industries, but like previous weeks when the White House tried to focus on infrastructure and jobs, that has been overshadowed by other news.
The messages were unusually graphic and resembled remarks Trump made during the campaign about the Megyn Kelly, another television anchor.
"You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever," Trump said in August 2015, a comment widely seen as referring to a Kelly's menstrual cycle.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump's latest statements.
"I don't think that the president's ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn't push back," she said in an interview on Fox News. "There have been an outrageous number of personal attacks, not just at him but to, frankly, everyone around him."
Although Trump and his aides have often portrayed his Twitter messages as a way of communicating his message directly with supporters, recent polling data suggests that the strategy has limited impact.
A nationwide survey released Wednesday by the polling institute at Marist College in New York, for example, found that only about one in five Americans found Trump's tweets to be "effective and informative." Nearly seven in 10 said they found them "reckless and distracting."
Worse for Trump, the distaste for his tweets extended far beyond Democrats. More than seven in 10 independents said they found his tweets "reckless and distracting." So did a majority of people who said they typically back Republicans but did not consider themselves strong partisans.
Even those who identified themselves as Trump supporters, the share who said they found his tweets "effective and informative" fell just short of a majority, with 48 percent taking that view, while 37 percent said they found the tweets reckless and distracting, and 15 percent were unsure.
Trump's tweets also appear to have lost considerable punch in their impact on his targets. Shortly after his election, tweets about individual companies caused notable drops in their stock prices. More recently, the markets have completely shrugged off Trump tweets about companies such as Amazon, which he targeted in a tweet earlier this week, part of his long-running feud with the company's CEO, Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.
