Lawrence O’Donnell wasn’t having it with cable news outlets for their coverage of former President Donald Trump’s rambling, false claim-filled press conference on Thursday.
The MSNBC anchor read a “good question” to Trump from NBC News’ Garrett Haake, who asked the former president if he’d direct the Food and Drug Administration to revoke access to mifepristone.
Trump’s response to the “yes or no” question was “not an answer,” said O’Donnell, who slammed his papers on his desk after reading what the former president told Haake.
“The words Donald Trump spoke to those reporters in response to that clear, simple and important yes or no question were an insult to everyone in that room and they took the insult. Nothing in those words was an answer, nothing,” O’Donnell said.
He later continued, “Donald Trump is not smart enough to answer questions. Anyone who then tells you that Kamala Harris has to answer questions from reporters because Donald Trump already answered questions from reporters is lying to themselves and to you and you must not allow them to do it.”
O’Donnell ripped cable news networks for carrying the event live and called it “2016 all over again,” adding that outlets are making the “same mistakes” with their reporting as they did while covering Trump that election cycle.
He also criticized reporters for not asking follow-up questions and knocked networks for fact-checking only after Trump finished speaking.
“But that of course is way too late and utterly useless,” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell also knocked networks for not covering Vice President Kamala Harris’ Michigan speech live after the Trump presser, noting that his network was doing Olympics coverage before bringing viewers the last few minutes of her remarks.
He vowed to “correct that mistake” by presenting MSNBC viewers with full, unedited video of Harris’ speech.
“All of the networks knew [the speech] was coming, they knew what time it was coming, they knew how to cover it live and they didn’t after giving Donald Trump more than an hour of live coverage on all of their networks. It’s 2016 all over again,” he said.
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