MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell “looks like shit,” former President Donald Trump said of the “Ratings Challenged” anchor of The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.
“I spotted Ratings Challenged Lawrence O’Donnell, of MSDNC, in the Courthouse today,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “I haven’t seen him in years. He looks like shit, a real loser!”
O’Donnell, a conspiracy theorist who describes himself as a “practical European socialist,” graduated from Harvard College in 1976 and later worked in Congress. From 1999 to 2006, O’Donnell was involved with The West Wing television drama. In 2009, O’Donnell began regularly appearing on Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough.
After O’Donnell began hosting his 10:00 p.m. MSNBC show in 2010, controversy ensued. He accused then-Republican primary candidate Herman Cain of not participating in the civil rights movements and alleged he avoided the Vietnam War draft.
In September 2017, a video of O’Donnell leaked that showed him cursing about background noise during MSNBC segments that aired the month before. He later apologized.
In 2019, O’Donnell retracted his allegations about the Russia hoax. O’Donnell claimed Deutsche Bank documents showed Russian oligarchs co-signed a loan application for Trump, the Associated Press reported:
O’Donnell reported the story, based on a single source he did not identify, even as he couched it with the qualifier “if true” and admitted it had not been verified by NBC News.
Trump’s lawyer, Charles Harder, had written to NBC Wednesday afternoon, saying the story was false and defamatory and threatening legal action if it wasn’t disowned. Harder said the story could have been disproven with an internet search.
O’Donnell quickly tweeted that he made an “error in judgment” reporting the story.
“We don’t know whether the information is inaccurate,” O’Donnell admitted later on air. “But the fact is we do know it wasn’t ready for broadcast, and for that, I apologize.”
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
