Mediaite » Lawrence O’Donnell

Lawrence O’Donnell Breaks It To Donald Trump: ‘Romney Knows’ He Is ‘America’s Biggest Loser’

Frances Martel — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:21:10 +0000

A mere minutes after Donald Trump had gone through the many, many ways he thought Rick Santorum was a loser on Fox News, over at MSNBC, he found himself on the receiving end of the same. It is no big secret that Lawrence O’Donnell isn’t a huge fan of Trump, but what may be news delivered by O’Donnell is his belief that Mitt Romney, Trump’s candidate in the Republican primary, thinks Trump is “a buffoon, and unconfirmable joke, America’s biggest loser.”

In this installment of the great Trump-O’Donnell feud that seems to have no end in sight, the latter hits all the scheduled stops on the Trump track: that Trump has no money, that his show is a false way to inflate an ego, that he is a laughable excuse for a human being and one day, it will actually hit him. Pointing out Trump’s comments in an interview with CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield in which Trump says that he would like a Cabinet job out of Romney “where I negotiate with some of these countries, because they’re taking our lunch.” He added that he did not want America to “keep losing our jobs to China.”

“The job you want is United States Trade Representative,” O’Donnell helpfully explained to Trump, adding that it was a Cabinet-level position, and that he would have a lot of problems with the confirmation process. “The Chief of Staff of the committee [a job O'Donnell once held] would learn everything there is to know about you… you will be asked in writing about your history of drug use, illegal drug use, and when is the last time you used them.” If that wasn’t enough, “not every little thing in your tax returns becomes public, just the really bad things.” O’Donnell added that he didn’t think that would bother Trump so much since he has a job where “you pretend to fire people who don’t actually work for you,” but that he would have a problem with a ~$200,000 a year salary because “you can’t live on that.”

But that, O’Donnell concluded, was irrelevant, because “Mitt Romney would never pick you to negotiate trade deal with the Chinese,” and that the Romney family wouldn’t hire Trump to “wash their cars.” “Romney knows you’re a buffoon, and unconfirmable joke, America’s biggest loser,” he concluded, before condemning Trump to his perch back on Twitter.

The segment via MSNBC below:

Lawrence O’Donnell Targets Asian Actress In Hoekstra Ad, Calls For ‘Dirty Politics’ Boycott

Frances Martel — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:21:28 +0000

Like many people, Lawrence O’Donnell expressed his disgust today at a Republican ad by candidate Pete Hoekstra depicting a Chinese woman thanking his congressional opponent for making China strong. O’Donnell did not bother too much with attacking Hoekstra or the Republicans, however, and instead went after the young actress in the ad, calling for actors to take a vow of “simple decency” and boycott these ads.

“Political ads that are that ugly and that stupid aren’t usually traceable to a candidate– that’s what SuperPACs are for,” O’Donnell noted. Luckily in some ways, this time Hoekstra ended the ad with his approval. He did not focus on Hoekstra so much as the actress in the video, however, and directly attacked her, noting that he has tried to find her for an interview to no avail. He added that Hoekstra has said she is “100% Chinese” without revealing her name. “I want to know exactly what she was thinking,” he noted, and then turned back the Hoekstra, in effect accusing him of hiding behind her image and suggesting one thing is for him to expound ideas and another “for him to hire an actor to do his dirty work for him.”

“It can be stopped right now, tonight, by a pledge of simple decency that all member of the Screen Actors’ Guild can make,” he noted, putting his right hand up as to make a promise: “I will not play dirty politics… that means that you will not play a character in political ads.” After his attack on the actor in the video, however, he explained that many actors engage in such things because of money problems, recounting the story of an actor he once “talked out of playing Hitler’s daughter” by asking if, in the worst case scenario that that was the last part she ever played, she would want to be remembered by it. “I have done things that I’m not proud of,” he concluded, “but I have not done anything I am ashamed of.”

The segment via MSNBC:

Lawrence O’Donnell Demolishes ‘Lying Vulgarian’ Trump’s Endorsement Of Romney

James Crugnale — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:33:27 +0000

Lawrence O’Donnell fiercely lambasted Donald Trump‘s endorsement of Mitt Romney on Thursday night’s edition of The Last Word. “Every single word that Donald Trump says publicly, every word, is designed to get attention to him so that he can pump up the ratings of his TV show,” O’Donnell jabbed. “…Because unlike Mitt Romney, Donald Trump still has to work for a living, and he so desperately needs the couple of million dollars that he makes on TV that he must spend his life promoting his show — and in show business, any mention of your name is good promotion. Consistency doesn’t matter.”

O’Donnell went on to play footage of Fox News’ anchor Greta Van Susteren‘s recent interview with Trump, which O’Donnell alleged was all an act.

“That is now Greta’s submission segment for Best Actress in a primetime cable news show,” O’Donnell snarked. “Keeping a straight face while Donald was talking about running for president, last week, last week! Is something no other woman in cable news could do.”

“He knows he cannot afford to run for president,” O’Donnell continued. “He simply isn’t rich enough, he doesn’t have a billion dollars, in which he knows he would lose, finally in effect he admitted all of that by endorsing a rich, robotic candidate who can afford to run for president and who never changed his message in any way to get Donald Trump’s endorsement, but was willing to appear in a Vegas casino to get that endorsement even though Mitt Romney’s religion is opposed to gambling.”

Watch below via MSNBC:

Melissa Harris-Perry: Image Of Brewer And Obama Reminds Me Of Civil Rights Era Photo

Alex Alvarez — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:16:28 +0000

On Thursday, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell and his guests discussed the “Finger of Fury” Arizona governor Jan Brewer gave President Barack Obama after greeting him on a tarmac this week.

Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell called Brewer’s move “impolite,” noting that Brewer didn’t have to accept the invitation to meet him in the first place. But, “if you’re there, you treat the President with respect; you don’t point a finger in his face.” If you’re angry with him or need to hash something out, he continued, do it inside. Not to mention that good relations with the President could be of enormous benefit to Brewer’s constituents, the people of Arizona. “So it’s dumb,” he summed up, “and it’s disrespectful.”

O’Donnell expressed amazement over how long Brewer and the President actually spoke with one another. “And he wasn’t talking most of the time,” he added. “She was doing most of the talking.”

MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, meanwhile, said the image of Brewer wagging her finger in the President’s face reminded her of the famous 1957 photo of Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan. The photo, taken as black students made their way into the newly-integrated Little Rock Central High School, shows Hazel yelling at Elizabeth to “go back to Africa” as she made her way to school:

Harris-Perry said she was reminded of the photo not because the meeting between Brewer and the President depicted racial tension (although that’s probably going to be people’s go-to assumption when you compare an image of a white woman shouting at a black man to a very famous, even iconic, image from the civil rights era) because Hazel later confessed to having been sort of “caught up in the frenzy” of the moment and “enjoyed the show” of being able to yell at Elizabeth.

Have a look, via MSNBC:

Goldie Taylor And Touré Compare Newt Gingrich To Jabba The Hutt And His Supporters To Stormtroopers

Tommy Christopher — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:06:57 +0000

On Thursday night’s The Last Word, host Lawrence O’Donnell discussed the recent fortunes of former House Speaker Newton Leroy Gingrich with panelists Goldie Taylor and Touré, and in addition to providing fresh insight into Newt’s newly-resurfaced extramarital history and racial politicking, they also managed to sneak in a few Star Wars references. Goldie likened Newt’s supporters to “stormtroopers,” while Touré compared Gingrich to Jabba The Hutt. Taylor has already cemented her status as cable news crush to several of my colleagues, but if she breaks out her Klingon to English Dictionary, who knows what will happen?

O’Donnell started off by playing a clip from Marianne Gingrich‘s bombshell interview with ABC News, in which she claims her then-husband tried to enlist her in an “open marriage.”

Touré made the excellent point that what Marianne Gingrich described wasn’t actually an “open marriage.”

“He’s saying, hey, I got a mistress, are you going to roll with that or not?” Touré said. ”That’s not an open marriage. That’s ridiculous leveraging.”

He then went on to deepen the distinction, making the case for “honest” open marriages. Practically speaking, though, it;s tough to imagine such an arrangement ever being truly equal, since modern-day culture (even in Europe) places most of the risks inherent in such behavior disproportionately on women. It’s like a fish telling a land mammal, “Let’s go swimming!”

O’Donnell then asked Taylor “What is the difference between Newt’s proposal for an open marriage, and Bill Clinton simply executing an open marriage, pretty much throughout, as far as we can tell, every year?”

Taylor had a bumper sticker-ready response. “The only thing open, in an open marriage, is somebody’s legs at the wrong time.”

“I mean, that’s sort of the long and short of it,” she continued. “You know, we have a name for that in America. It’s called roommates. You just don’t get married if you’re not willing to put together what is a very tight social contract, that involves finances and possibly children and households, and yes, sex too.”

Taylor also agreed that the Southern Baptist culture of forgiveness would probably prevent these revelations from hurting Gingrich too much. “I think you’re dealing with an electorate, you know, I’m a proud Christian and a proud Southern woman. And one of the things that we believe in is reconciliation.”

On the subject of Gingrich’s recently escalated racial drumbeat, Goldie said “Newt Gingrich has been doing this for 30 years. He’s been thumping the drum of racial insensitivity for 30 years, stoking people’s fears…They put us all in the same boat. black and white, all of us poor, and got us all rowing in different directions against each other.

“He’s doing this purposely,” Taylor continued, “so he can drum up a very specific base that he knows will turn out in this GOP primary. Those people vote like stormtroopers, and if he can get them to his side, he cannot lose.”

Touré brought the subject back around to Gingrich’s wandering lightsaber. “The open marriage came out today, and there’s something in a news, political sense, sexy about…”

“Whoa, whoa, wait,” O’Donnell interrupted. “Open marriage involving Newt Gingrich is not sexy…”

“It’s gross, in a Jabba the Hutt way, but it’s a lightning rod issue in that sort of way. and sure, it’s the thing that people wanted to hear about. Hey, Newt, what do you think about this? So as John King, you’ve got to ask him, and Newt Gingrich’s response in terms of blaming the media is so gross and offpoint. It’s not the media’s problem here. It’s whether or not he did this, and he seems to have had disgusting behavior toward his wives repeatedly, and whether or not his wife is telling the truth.”

It looks like Taylor is probably right that Gingrich’s marital history won’t hurt him in this weekend’s South Carolina primary, but I think she gives that electorate too much credit. That Christian forgiveness seems to end at the line between red and blue.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC:

D.L. Hughley Tears Into Gingrich: Having Left A Sick Wife, He’s Forfeited Right To Use The Word ‘Despicable’

Alex Alvarez — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:24:42 +0000

When you think open marriage, you think comedian D. L. Hughley, right? The actor paid a visit to MSNBC’s The Last Word on Thursday to weigh in South Carolina’s possible reaction to the claim that former Speaker Newt Gingrich asked his ex-wife, Marianne, for an open marriage. Host Lawrence O’Donnell opened the segment by noting that the American South has both a higher marriage and divorce rate than in the North, and that Southerners consume more porn.

Hughley joked that Gingrich’s affairs and jewelry-purchasing habits (you’ll remember “Tiffanygate,” of course) mean that he’s not a president… he’s a rapper.

O’Donnell then reported that, according to a Tweet from Terry Moran, Marianne Gingrich is standing by her claims, adding that her ex-husband seems not to have changed since the end of their marriage as he has yet to apologize for his actions.

“Newt Gingrich is the kind of man,” said Hughley, “who will lie when the truth will do.” He then circled back to Gingrich’s characterization of questions about his affair and marriage as “despicable:”

When a man would leave a woman — the mother of his children — when she is struggling with a life-threatening disease, then he has forfeited the right forever to say the word “despicable.”

Have a look, courtesy of MSNBC:

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Lawrence O’Donnell Defends Modern Family‘s Right To Say ‘F**k’, Is Bummed He Can’t

Jon Bershad — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:59:28 +0000

Today, parent groups and fundamentalists are condemning ABC’s Modern Family. Why? Because every single episode is basically identical, they’ve ruined Julie Bowen’s character, it’s a show that uses ridiculously hoary cliches and tries to disguise them with the ridiculously lazy “mocumentary” structure, and it hogs every single television award when actually innovative comedy shows get nothing. Oh, wait. Those are just the reasons people should be condemning Modern Family. No, these groups are just ticked off because, last night, the show did the whole “a young child learns a dirty word and can’t stop saying it” storyline you’ve seen in every single sitcom ever and these people still think four letter words have the ability to conjure up the devil or something. Fortunately, Lawrence O’Donnell, a self-proclaimed “profane person,” is here to defend the show’s (bleeped out) curse words as well as curse words as a whole.

After quoting the silly groups’ claims that the episode will make profanity more accepted, O’Donnell pointed out that it already is accepted. The thing is just that normal people know when you can use it and when you can’t. Which is why a sitcom will have a curse word (or a young actress saying a similar word while the bleep makes it seem like something else) and his telecast will not.

“Realists do not try to put them in a bubble where they will not hear the common language of their culture. The real parenting responsibility in America is not to try to hide your child from the real language, but to prepare your children to hear it. And, if you so choose to guide your children away from using it, to give them a rationale for not using profanity.”

A-fucking-men, Lawrence. This was a good segment.

…even if calling Modern Family “bold” is basically the same as calling Wonder Bread “thrilling.”

Watch the clip from MSNBC below:

Lawrence O’Donnell: Stephen Colbert Highlights What’s Wrong With Mitt Romney’s SuperPACs

James Crugnale — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 03:55:34 +0000

Is Stephen Colbert‘s satirical presidential run in South Carolina a veiled slap at Mitt Romney? MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell spoke with former Clinton Administration staffer Robert Reich on The Last Word, and examined the mischievous late-night host’s modus operandi.

“This is all the product — the predictable product, I guess, of the Citizens United ruling by the United States Supreme Court, this out-of-control SuperPAC environment,” O’Donnell observed. “Do you think Stephen Colbert is helping by showing how crazy this has become or is he letting people relax about it and thinking it’s just kind of funny and turning it into something too light?”

“Never underestimate the affect of satire in politics,” Reich proclaimed. “I think it does have a positive effect, but when you come right down to it, this is not a joke. I mean, SuperPACs, money in politics — completely out of control right now and it all does go back, not just to what the Supreme Court did two years ago, 5-4 majority, Citizens United against the FEC, saying essentially that corporations are people, and then also combined with the prior Supreme Court case that said money is speech. Well, if corporations are people and money is speech, the net effect is to open the floodgates to money in politics right now in a way that we haven’t seen in this country for over 100 years…I mean, essentially we’re losing our democracy. i don’t want to be overly dramatic about it, but that is the only thing that I can say. we are — we have to take our democracy back, Lawrence.

“Colbert has handed the PAC over to (Jon) Stewart so he can say that Romney line, ‘I have no control over this SuperPAC,’” O’Donnell noted. “I mean, he’s doing everything that highlights what’s wrong with these SuperPACs — where do we begin to try to get control of this?”

“We probably do need a constitutional amendment,” Reich proposed. “That’s the conclusion that many lawyers and constitutional experts have come to. The Supreme Court, unless we get a radically different Supreme Court soon — and we’re probably not all that soon, the way to do it, the most direct way to do it, it’s going to take some time, but the most direct way to do it is to have a constitutional amendment.”

Watch O’Donnell analyze Stephen Colbert’s satirical presidential campaign below via MSNBC:

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Takes Shot At CNN’s Ratings

Nando Di Fino — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:30:25 +0000

During a panel discussion on Morning Joe Tuesday, Last Word host Lawrence O’Donnell was asked about Newt Gingrich going after Mitt Romney for his Bain Capital connection.

O’Donnell suggested he should check the New York Times to see what they were saying. He promptly lifted up the paper, held it up to pretend he was reading it, and showed off a bright yellow back-page ad that touted MSNBC’s ratings win over CNN.

Watch the clip below, courtesy of MSNBC:

Meghan McCain: ‘Would Be, Like, Slitting My Wrists’ If Dad Had Endorsed ‘Moron’ Santorum

Frances Martel — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:19:29 +0000

Meghan McCain is a person who gets paid to think and say intelligent things about politics on cable news. The daughter of Sen. John McCain, who before joining MSNBC was famous for tweeting a provocative photo of her breasts, joined Lawrence O’Donnell last night to discuss her father’s endorsement of Mitt Romney. Other than stating the obvious about Romney (“[his sons] are just perfect and beautiful”) she took the time to call someone else a “moron”– namely, Rick Santorum who, had Sen. McCain endorsed him, “I mean, I’d be, like, slitting my wrists” over it.

O’Donnell began by noting that it was bizarre that Sen. McCain would endorse Romney because “he hates Mitt Romney,” but he probably hates Santorum more. “Santorum is a moron,” contributed McCain, which amused O’Donnell because “I love hearing Republicans calling Republicans morons.” She then tried to say “My dad really like Mitt Romney” with a straight face, for which O’Donnell mocked her. So she tried to explain how much worse any other alternative would be: “If he would’ve endorsed Santorum, I mean, I would be, like, slitting my wrists.”

The conversation went on, as McCain took a subtle dig at other previous Republican candidates that have not endorsed (hello Sarah Palin!) by saying that “it lacks courage” to not endorse. She went on to explain that she believed Sen. McCain “could win governor of New Hampshire” today if he chose to run (?) and “what people think about losing candidates is their prerogative.” She then went on to corroborate her love of Mitt Romney by admitting to stealing his yard signs and being “obsessed with their sons, they’re just perfect and beautiful” unlike the prestigious McCain family, that counts among them one of the most powerful men in the Senate but are, apparently, just “a tattooed bunch of drinkers.”

Meghan McCain’s quest for acceptance in punditry has, unfortunately for those who acknowledge her shortcomings, the built in invulnerability of gaining strength from criticism, in the unhealthiest way. By virtue treating her on equal footing with people who have earned the right to a place in the public discourse, McCain wins. And for a long time, McCain has benefited from the unavoidable reality that, youth notwithstanding, she is simply not in the same intellectual league as her contemporaries on both the left (Ezra Klein, Chris Hayes) and the right (Andrea Tantaros, Mary Katharine Ham). Half out of pity and half out of, perhaps, having better things to do, it has been a hallmark of media criticism of McCain that it is tailored to her levels of comprehension and apparent sensitivity and thus much milder than her actual statements deserve. When she has been attacked harshly, it has not been for the waste of time and energy that she represents in the public consciousness, but for entirely unfair and superficial reasons, and those that called out Glenn Beck, among others, for ignoring her words and resorting to cruelty have been correct.

And so to actually sit down and analyze why comments like “[Mitt Romney]‘s son are perfect and beautiful” and “I mean, I would, like, slit my wrists” are not actually political insights that should be on any respected political venue is, at the very least, a tedious endeavor. Simply put, there’s a reason why O’Donnell talks down to McCain in a way that he did not even do when he had a high school girl on the program explain why she thought Rep. Michele Bachmann was dumb. No one ever leaves a Meghan McCain column or a segment on cable news thinking, “wow, I hadn’t thought of that” or “I’m glad I took the time to figure out what this woman is thinking.” Those on the left may leave a McCain appearance or column with a chuckle, as she confirms many patronizing stereotypes about the right– perhaps this is what makes her a perfect fit on MSNBC. Say what you will about polemics on both sides of the aisle– from Rachel Maddow to Sean Hannity– every extreme and eye-catching comment they make is balanced by an insight into their worldview that reminds the viewer they are worthy of their place in primetime. The same can be said of McCain’s contemporaries– so as to control for the fact that it is unfair to compare commentators that have decades of experience on McCain with her. For every silly, off-the-record email or outlandishly out-of-nowhere attack on ideological parties that are later proven correct, there’s the sense of passion for knowledge and simple intellectual effort that is sorely lacking from the McCain experience, and as long as that fact is ignored by those whose hearts are softened by such political laziness, she’ll be ready for the airwaves, prepping to call someone else a “moron.”

The segment via MSNBC below:

[h/t The Blaze]

Ed Schultz And Lawrence O’Donnell Get Into It Over Rick Santorum ‘Manufacturing Plan’

Tommy Christopher — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:04:22 +0000

Things got a little bit heated during MSNBC’s Iowa Caucus coverage Tuesday night when The Ed Show host Ed Schultz and The Last Word host Lawrence O’Donnell sparred over surging candidate Rick Santorum‘s tax repatriation plan, and whether it constitutes a “manufacturing plan.”

The exchange was heated, but brief, as co-anchor Rachel Maddow comically saved the day with the cheery declatarion, “Look! It’s Rick Perry!”

Rev. Al Sharpton began by observing that, rather than heading into New Hampshire with a focus on President Obama, Mitt Romney now “has got to run against Santorum, and the longer that narrative plays, the better it is for the President.”

Sizing up the danger that Santorum presents to Romney, Schultz said “I’ve seen him on the stump. He does talk about manufacturing. He talks about repatriating money coming back into the United States. Zero percent when it comes to corporate tax. I mean, he does have a manufacturing plan, which is going to play well in New Hampshire.”

“That is not a manufacturing plan,” O’Donnell cut in. “That is a big corporate tax break that produces absolutely…”

“That is his pitch, Lawrence,” Schultz replied. “I’ve seen it. I was there.”

After a few more seconds of heated back-and-forth, just when it started to get good, The Rachel Maddow Show‘s Rachel Maddow cut through the tension by cheerily exclaiming, “Look! It’s Rick Perry!”

The segment resembled nothing so much as a heated Thanksgiving dinner that ends with mom piping up “Who wants pie?!?”

To many liberals, it may seem as if Schultz is getting carried away with Rick Santorum, whom he has compared favorably with President Obama, and whose retail politicking earned raves from Schultz last week. Santorum is so despised by liberals that they tend to dismiss him, as Maddow does, but if you’re going to cover a Republican primary, you can’t think like a liberal. The things that make Santorum repugnant to liberals are the very keys to his success in GOP primaries, particularly Iowa.

Schultz’s point, I believe, wasn’t about the merits of Santorum’s plan, but about the appeal of manufacturing rhetoric, while O’Donnell was having a different conversation entirely. The plan calls for tax-free repatriation of profits, as long as the funds are used to purchase manufacturing equipment. Santorum says this will spur manufacturing, but critics say it’s just a giveaway to corporations that will be used for purchases they were going to make anyway.

Ed’s assessment of Santorum’s retail skills is dead-on, and he’s right about how Santorum’s plan will play with voters, but it is also necessary to go over the substance of the issue. I’d have been interested to see if Schultz would have done that, had O’Donnell given him the chance. It’s also worth considering whether O’Donnell jumped all over Schultz out of anti-Santorum zeal, or because of some sour-grapey unresolved resentment over Schultz’s takeover of O’Donnell’s 8pm time slot. Maybe it was a bit of each.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC:

Rachel Maddow: ‘Ron Paul Voters Are Human Beings, Too. Why Does Nobody Compete For Them?’

Frances Martel — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:01:42 +0000

With the results of the Iowa caucuses still to close to call in a seriously difficult to pin down three-way race, the fate of one of those candidates’ supporters was on Rachel Maddow‘s mind tonight as it became increasingly clear that either Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum would take the state: Rep. Ron Paul‘s. Why, Maddow asked, did no other candidate try to lure in Rep. Paul’s supporters? After all, “Ron Paul voters are human beings, too!”

“It’s like he’s a miasma in the room; it’s like he doesn’t have corporeal form,” Maddow remarked of Rep. Paul, wondering why nobody competes for them during MSNBC’s election coverage tonight. Lawrence O’Donnell responded by noting that Rep. Paul’s influence was felt in how extreme some of the more conservative candidates have become on foreign policy, claiming they would be comfortable attacking Iran. He added that Rep. Paul, despite his libertarian views, was benefiting from the Republican label. “If he were running as a Libertarian, we would never speak of him ever!” he joked.

Maddow rebutted him on the idea that Republicans could simply ignore Rep. Paul should he win Iowa because “that’s not our politics,” but O’Donnell disputed that claim by pointing to the way Mike Huckabee was dismissed in 2008. But Maddow wasn’t entirely referring the Rep. Paul being ignored as a candidate, but his supporters as a group of voters who could be consolidated into another campaign, particularly if Rep. Paul refused to run as a third party candidate later on.

That possible scenario Steve Schmidt suggested was barely possible because of Sen. Rand Paul, and the damage to his career the elder Paul running as a third party candidate– “there would be devastating political consequences… for Rand Paul and I don’t think he would that to his son,” he commented.

So what would an exit for Rep. Paul mean for other candidates? Al Sharpton suggested it would be a boost for Newt Gingrich if he responded wisely, as he was the only candidate who refused to say he would vote for a nominee Paul.

The segment via MSNBC below:

Barney Frank Offers Lawrence O’Donnell A 2012 Democrat Slogan: ‘We’re Not Perfect, But They’re Nuts’

Frances Martel — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 04:25:20 +0000

Rep. Barney Frank may find the 2012 Republican primary as wildly entertaining as most anyone else following the campaigns has, but he is still a little worried that the Democrats may suffer from this. This he told Lawrence O’Donnell on tonight’s The Last Word, where he explained that part of the blame for close-minded political rhetoric was voter demand, and that Democratic desire to cooperate has led to more gridlock in Congress.

O’Donnell opened the segment with a montage of claims from the Republican contenders, which he described by saying, “they always say what they are going to do as if they are running for king,” in “these simple declarative sentences.” “You can blame the candidates, and you can blame the media,” Rep. Frank responded, “but one party is [also] partially responsible, and that’s the voter.” He continued to argue that “understanding how to get the government to function, knowing how to make things work, is an important qualification for the job,” but voers often didn’t want to hear about it, “in the atmosphere in which we live today and probably in which we’ve always live, in which politics is a bad word.” Often, he concluded, “the public does not want you to talk about one of the most important parts of the job.”

He then turned to the Democrats’ behavior running the country, and lamented that President Obama “was too trusting of the Republicans” given “how right-wing the Republican Party has become.” “He said he would govern in a post-partisan manner; I got post-partisan depression,” Rep. Frank quipped. Admitting that the campaign has been “very entertaining,” he concluded with a slogan suggestion for 2012 Democratic candidates: “we’re not perfect, but they’re nuts.”

The segment via MSNBC below:

Lawrence O’Donnell Compares GOP Candidates To Porn Producers

Nando Di Fino — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:09:25 +0000

Thursday night, Lawrence O’Donnell brought up a Los Angeles primary ballot measure — a possible law that would require porn stars to wear condoms while filming in Los Angeles — and found a way to work in the GOP field of candidates, suggesting that the two groups were similar in not wanting to be burdened with any more regulations.

O’Donnell introduced the segment by using the brilliant segue of Newt GIngrich‘s inability to get the 10,000 signatures required to get on the Virginia primary ballot. He noted that the measure that would require actors in porn to wear condoms while filming in the city of Los Angeles had collected 70,000.

“There is no clearer measure of the depths that the Gingrich campaign has sunk to than the fact that there are more people who want to protect the health of porn stars than there are people in the entire state of Virginia who want the chance to vote for Newt Gingrich for President.”

O’Donnell then said that — if the field has at least two candidates by the time the California primary comes around and there is a debate — the first question he wants to hear asked is, ‘Are you in favor of porn stars being required to wear condoms?’ O’Donnell considers it a trick question, saying that, to a GOP candidate, it’s a choice between being anti-tax and pro-porn producer.

The measure would collect a fee from the porn productions and create a job of “porn set condom inspector,” O’Donnell reported. He imagined that while Ron Paul would be vehemently opposed to this, the rest of the field might be torn. “Do they stand side by side with porn producers?” O’Donnell asked, then added:

“The only people who hate regulation even a little bit more than Republican presidential candidates are porn producers.”

Enjoy the “Rewrite” clip below, courtesy of MSNBC:

Lawrence O’Donnell Reviews What Sacha Baron Cohen Can Tell Us About Newt Gingrich And Ron Paul

Frances Martel — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 04:08:07 +0000

Tonight, Lawrence O’Donnell dedicated a segment to correcting Newt Gingrich‘s misconceptions. Not a surprising development, except for the fact that the misconception in dispute was that Gingrich considered his commercial with Rep. Nancy Pelosi the most foolish thing he had done in recent years. O’Donnell disagreed, turning to another video encounter in Gingrich’s past: his interview with Sacha Baron Cohen character Ali G.

O’Donnell did not keep his analysis exclusive to Gingrich, also playing the clip of Baron Cohen embarrassing a very outraged Rep. Ron Paul by propositioning him for sex in his hotel room as the gay Austrian TV maven Brüno. Both clips are definitely worth watching (and re-watching!)– for those who have forgotten (or weren’t following the brilliant Da Ali G Show when it was still on HBO), the full Gingrich encounter is below:

For O’Donnell, the most ridiculous thing about the Gingrich interview was the fact that Gingrich “never figured out that the whole thing was a joke,” while he noted– with Richard Wolff in tow– that the Rep. Paul tape showed something sinister about the Congressman that wasn’t particularly overt in his campaign– that he was, as one former staffer noted, “personally uncomfortable around homosexuals.” Wolff found the anecdote told by that former staffer that Rep. Paul wouldn’t use a bathroom at a home where two gay men lived “pathetic,” and the fact that what bothered Rep. Paul was that Brüno was “queer” to be the problematic bit of that prank.

Back to Gingrich, O’Donnell noted that “I love that someone spun him ‘you should talk to this guy because he’s big in England,” which Wolff added that was due to a quality not unique to Gingrich “a truckload of politicians are so desperate to be on TV that they will put up with this nonsense.”

The segment via MSNBC below:

Lawrence O’Donnell Warns Jon Stewart To ‘Root For Newt’: ‘You Need A Nut To Win’

Frances Martel — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:01:05 +0000

During his last week before vacation, Jon Stewart sat down the Republican Party and staged an intervention to get them to realize just how terrible nominating Newt Gingrich would be for their party. He may have been doing the GOP a favor, but Lawrence O’Donnell tonight had to stage his own intervention with Stewart to remind him of a very salient point: Newt Gingrich makes for great comedy.

Playing the clip from last week’s Daily Show in which Stewart encourages Republicans to vote for someone else, O’Donnell explained that “it is Stewart who needs an intervention. “Look at the polls– if Gingrich goes down, we’re getting Romney. You think you have a year of Romney jokes in you? You don’t.” O’Donnell was very serious about the potential comedy crisis that could come with a Mitt Romney nomination. “Mitt Romney is the worst thing that could happen to comedy in America,” he argued. “I’m telling you, you want Newt,” he told Stewart.

Why? O’Donnell played a clip of Gingrich saying something outrageous– “there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that is trying to impose its will on all of us”– followed by the insistence that “you need a nut to win the nomination.” He finally began to plea with Stewart to “think about your wife, your children, think about what it will be like for them when you come home from another day of writing Romney jokes.” And for his writers, O’Donnell argued, “they know they can’t win more Emmys with Romney jokes!” O’Donnell concluded by dramatically imploring Stewart to “think about what is best for you and, yes, think about what is best for America.”

The segment via MSNBC below:

Lawrence O’Donnell Mocks Trump’s ‘Humiliation Tour’ To Promote His Near-Defunct Debate

Frances Martel — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:08:19 +0000

Lawrence O’Donnell never thought the proposed Donald Trump-moderated debate would be anything but an “embarrassment.” The News that Trump has only two candidates on board for the event, then– Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum– and that Trump has taken to calling the debate a “chat” are music to his ears. On his “Rewrite” segment tonight, O’Donnell explained how Trump’s media appearances today were part of a “humiliation tour.”

“Trump himself has given up on the debate,” O’Donnell argued, showing clips in which he called the debate a “chat” with Gingrich and Santorum, a move O’Donnell named a “rewrite” itself. Going through the interviews of the proposed moderator today, he left his interview with Bill O’Reilly for last, concluding this was a “humiliation tour where even his longtime friend Bill O’Reilly can’t keep a straight face when trump talks about debate he was forced to downgrade to a chat.”

The segment via Fox News below:

MSNBC.com Job Ad: Conservative News Experts Need Not Apply?

InsideCableNews — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:51:20 +0000

MSNBC’s new info blog listed a couple of job postings today…

Msnbc.com is looking to fill two new positions! If you’ve got editorial experience and an interest in television and politics, check out these two great job opps.

Job recs get posted all the time, and I don’t really look at them much, but for some reason, and I have no idea why, this time I decided to. One was more of a support position for Up with Chris Hayes, and another that seemed more like a general editorial position. This is what I saw for the latter. I’ve highlighted what I consider to be the most relevant parts…

Sr. Writer/Editor, MSNBC Cable

Editorial | New York City, NY, United States

MSNBC TV on msnbc.com, online home of The Rachel Maddow Show, The Ed Show, Morning Joe, The Last Word, Up W/Chris Hayes, and other shows, is looking for a full-time blogger/writer/producer to enhance our Decision 2012 online coverage. Applicants must have a passion for and background in politics, be avid viewers of MSNBC cable shows, and have the ability to quickly curate, write, produce and promote compelling and accurate editorial content.

Topics and coverage will begin with the broadcasts (newsmaker or analyst interviews, and reported stories), but will not be limited to what is on air. Applicants should be voracious social media and news/opinion consumers, be good headline writers, have the ability to multi-task, and work independently under a tight deadline.

Candidates must have a minimum of 5 years’ experience at a print or online publication, have a basic understanding of HTML and extensive experience with content management systems or blog publishing platforms. Must have thorough knowledge of political and progressive news. Previous TV/video background a plus.

Writer/producer must be willing to work during msnbc’s primetime hours, and be excited about covering debates, primaries and the 2012 elections.

Please send links to previous work and any relevant social media streams.

Both the Up rec and the one I highlighted wanted candidates to have strong knowledge of progressive news. While I can see the applicability of that for Up, I’m having a harder time understanding the propriety of it in this other rec. This is allegedly to be a position that is, at least partly, in support of Decision 2012, which as far as I know is an NBC News project that’s not supposed to skew along ideological lines. The very idea that MSNBC is looking for political editors whose knowledge of progressive news matters, but knowledge of conservative news apparently does not matter, seems to run entirely counter to what NBC News professes to be about.

On the other hand, the rec also mentions that the position requires the applicant to work during MSNBC’s primetime hours, and primetime is progressive time on MSNBC, so this position may be nothing more than someone who writes about what happens during MSNBC primetime and election coverage which, as we all know, and much to many people’s chagrin, is populated not by straight news journalists, but by progressive ideological talking heads (or socialist heads in the case of Lawrence O’Donnell).

The danger in all this is it has the potential of creating, in MSNBC, a system where knowledge of subject matter is defined not by whether you know the story, but whether you know one side’s interpretation of the story. It makes me queasy about the status of that vaunted NBC News firewall between news and opinion.

It’s tough to unwind all this…it’s just so nebulous. You’ve got the MSNBC.com news site, and the MSNBC TV pages, and Campaign 2012 stuff all together. But it got me to wondering about whatever happened to that story Brian Stelter scooped on concerning MSNBC.com getting rebranded. That was over a year ago, and there hasn’t been a peep regarding it since.

Note – this post first appeared on Inside Cable News and appears here with consent.

Elizabeth Warren: Karl Rove Takes Wall St. Money To Attack Me For Being Cozy With Wall St.

Alex Alvarez — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:57:44 +0000

On Thursday, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell brought on Massachusetts senatorial candidate and Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren to discuss reaction to her ongoing campaign.

O’Donnell kicked things off by pointing out a recent attack ad against Warren that attempted to cast a negative light on her role as an Ivy League professor. “You know, all I can say is ‘yeah, I have a job at Harvard,’” she responded. “But I ‘wasn’t’ born at Harvard.”

As for the ad’s attempts at painting Warren as a “coddler” of billionaires and protector of Wall Street, she says this is merely a “kitchen sink strategy” in which the opposition throws anything and everything at her to try and see what sticks.

“Let’s keep in mind what was going on just a little over three years ago,” she advised. “Karl Rove was part of the inner circle while George W. Bush is telling Congress and a nation, ‘We gotta bail out the big financial institutions,’ his Secretary of the Treasury is handing out money to the largest financial institutions, no strings attached. I go down to Washington and I’m calling ‘em out for it. I’m calling ‘em out on executive bonuses, I’m calling ‘em out on the fact that they’re giving this money away, no strings attached. And I get attacked for it. Ok. Then we roll forward three years. Now Karl Rove takes money from Wall Street in order to attack Elizabeth Warren for being cozy with Wall Street?”

The two then wondered whether incumbent Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown voted in favor of Rich Cordray to try and gain an edge on Warren.

Watch, via MSNBC:

Lawrence O’Donnell Recently Shared A Flight With Alec Baldwin And Found Him Most Polite

Colby Hall — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:09:30 +0000

In last night’s Last Word, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell acted as a character witness for embattled actor Alec Baldwin, who has found himself in the news after being kicked off an American Airlines flight for allegedly exhibiting “extremely rude” behavior after being asked to stop playing a game on his iPad. O’Donnell made clear to his audience that he didn’t know what really happened with Baldwin, but he did claim that he sat next to Baldwin on a flight to Los Angeles the Friday before, and found him to be a delight.

After revealing that he’d shared the long flight with Baldwin from New York to Los Angeles on Friday, O’Donnell said:

But I can tell you that I have never, never seen a more polite person on an airplane than Alec Baldwin. I don’t really know him, I had said hello to him a couple times, here and there, before that flight. That was the first time I ever sat with him in any experience like that. He was polite to a fault. He embarrassed me with his politeness. He certainly was more polite than I was, which, of course is a low bar, as some people already know.

Naked self-effacement aside, O’Donnell deserves some level of credit for going to bat for his travel neighbor in what was most likely a first-class flight across the country. But while some are sure to laud O’Donnell’s sharing of this air travel coincidence, it’s not fair to compare the way Baldwin chatted up an MSNBC host (and progressive thought leader) and the way the television and movie star reportedly treated the American Airlines flight crew (which he explained in an essay on Huffington Post.)

Since joining the ranks of MSNBC prime time hosts a year ago, O’Donnell has consistently and vigorously given voice to the plight of working class. His aggressively progressive point of view has been well received by the MSNBC audience, though his detractors point to his custom tailored suits and his $88 Seize sur Vingt socks as evidence that O’Donnell’s just a “limousine liberal.”

While his character defense of Baldwin was introduced with appropriate caveats that he “was not there,” O’Donnell’s portrayal of a polite Baldwin, from his experience, also unwittingly portrays the MSNBC host as the perfect villain for the right: a certified member of cultural elite. (Sturm and drang!)

But even if one argues that O’Donnell’s experience with Baldwin is relevant to the actor’s expulsion from another flight altogether, one can also question if it merited that much real estate on The Last Word. Couldn’t that segment have been put to better use in about a million different ways?

Watch the segment below, courtesy of MSNBC:

Richard Wolffe On Mitt Romney: ‘If Risk Taking Is Talking To Chris Wallace, You Need To Recalibrate’

Alex Alvarez — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:00:43 +0000

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell presented viewers to the “new and desperate Mitt Romney,” a Mitt Romney who is making himself more available to the media in the wake of former Speaker Newt Gingrich‘s rise in the polls.

Romney explained the change in strategy to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto the other afternoon, telling him that this is simply what happens near the end of a campaign cycle — the “final push,” if you like.

MSNBC analyst Richard Wolffe joined O’Donnell to talk more about Romney’s strategy.

“It’s not exactly radical, is it?” said Wolffe. “I mean, if risk taking is talking to Chris Wallace, then you need to recalibrate your approach to risk. There are a number of strategies you can adopt to try and dig your way out of a former front-runner status. You could be Al Gore and say you’re the ‘underdog’ and get scrappy and try and take on Bill Bradley. You could just rip off your opponent wholesale, that’s what Bush did to McCain in South Carolina. You can do any number of different things. You can be John McCain and talk to the press all day, every day.” But going on cable, he added, may not be the best way to take on an opponent while reaching out to as many voters as possible.

The main problem Romney’s campaign is currently facing, as Wolffe sees it, is that it had been fueled primarily and for so long by his “inevitability factor.” And now that Gingrich is surging ahead, the campaign must look to something else to make sure voters know this candidate isn’t simply electable because “of course he is.” One way to go about this, Wolffe suggested, is to try and portray a sense of spontaneity and “realness.” But that sort of authenticity is difficult to convey, he argued, via cable news. O’Donnell agreed, noting that it isn’t as if Romney had received much of a warm welcome from Fox News, particularly compared to his rivals who have previously worked at the network.

Could it be time for Romney to launch a Barack-Obama-in-’08 style “Hope” campaign to inspire voters to stick with him?

Have a look, courtesy of MSNBC:

Lawrence O’Donnell And Chuck Todd Predict The ‘Embarrassment’ Potential Of The Trump Debate

Frances Martel — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 03:59:33 +0000

The last time Donald Trump was a relevant political actor in the news cycle, it took a little longer than for most commentators for Lawrence O’Donnell to let go. Now that he’s back, O’Donnell began today’s episode of The Last Word with a thorough excoriation of Trump, Newt Gingrich for meeting with him, and a post-mortem with Chuck Todd on his Trump interview this morning.

Noting that Gingrich had “debased himself by meeting with Trump in New York– and it is not easy for Newt to debase himself,” O’Donnell began by wondering whether Gingrich enjoyed the time with Trump because he was “finally hanging out with a guy who is tied in marriages.” He went on to hit Trump harder than Gingrich, however, bringing up his repeated claim that Trump “does not have enough money to finance a presidential campaign… and is not a billionaire, he simply plays on one television.” He then turned to the contentious conversation Todd had with Trump this morning, as Todd had suggested that a Trump endorsement could do more harm than good, something Trump replied indignantly he knew was not possible, has he had studied polls at the Wharton School of Business.

“I do really believe that someone will be worse off if you endorse a Republican candidate for president and I don’t believe you studied polls at Wharton,” O’Donnell replied. “You were an undergraduate for two years at Wharton in the 1960s, before polls were even invented,” adding that Wharton is not a political science school.

O’Donnell then turned for further discussion to Todd himself, who noted that, among others, Karl Rove was not happy with this development (as this broadcast aired, in fact, Rove was hopping mad over at Fox News), and “wants the Republican National Committee to officially get involved,” the problem with that being that “with every hour, another candidate agrees to the debate.”

O’Donnell proposed that there was a good reason for the establishment to be worried. “They will produce stuff for us to use the next day,” he explained, but “all you can do is end up with… varying levels of embarrassment.” Essentially, O’Donnell argued there was no way to “win” this debate for anyone but Donald Trump. Todd agreed that it would be “a de facto episode of The Apprentice,” adding that “how some of our friends at other news organizations have gone about [debates] have made it sort of ugly.”

The segment via MSNBC below:

Lawrence O’Donnell Applauds Stephen Colbert For Sticking By Herman Cain

James Crugnale — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:46:53 +0000

On MSNBC’s The Last Call Wednesday night, Lawrence O’Donnell gave props to Stephen Colbert for sticking by former Godfather Pizza CEO and scandal-beleaguered presidential candidate Herman Cain, despite everyone else turning their backs on him. “Even Fox News has rewritten its position on Herman Cain from the ‘women are all lying’ to ‘when are you gonna drop out?’ There is only one Herman Cain true believer left in the political media — Stephen Colbert — the right-wing reactionary played by Stephen Colbert, the actor, refuses to give up on his dream of a Cain presidency and he is still trying to show Cain how to rewrite his troubles to his advantage.”

“Now, technically, I believe we are now up to he said/she said/she said/she said/she said/she was paid not to say,” Colbert joked on his program last night.

“Nation, this is devastating, because the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO is considering the unthinkable. Cain says he is going to spend a few days off, reassessing his candidacy. We could lose him. Herman, don’t you leave this election lover’s pizza half baked! Not just as a supporter but as a broadcaster, i need you in the race…And there’s no reason for you to leave. A 13-year affair just proves you can carry on a stable relationship!”

Watch O’Donnell laud Colbert’s defense via MSNBC:

Lawrence O’Donnell: Herman Cain’s ‘Worst Sin’ Is Saying Black Democrats Are ‘Brainwashed’

Frances Martel — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 04:15:30 +0000

Judging from today’s headlines, Herman Cain has some serious explaining to do to his wife, Gloria, as yet another women has come out publicly alleging an affair with the Republican presidential candidate. It was the top story on tonight’s Last Word, and Lawrence O’Donnell noted that there was much Cain had to apologize to his wife for. But the affairs were low on the totem poll for O’Donnell, who recalled a comment by Cain that black voters who registered Democrat were “brainwashed” into doing so. It turns out Gloria Cain is a Democrat, and likely voted for Obama in 2008.

O’Donnell went through the entire story– how Ginger White alleged a 13-year affair, how Cain had denied it but his attorney had released “the political equivalent of an admission”– “it is so true that the politician can’t even talk about it.” He noted that “most Republican voters will remember the charges of sexual harassment or perhaps this 13-year affair as Herman Cain’s worst sin as a candidate,” but to him it was not.

And he played the clip of Cain saying black Democrats were brainwashed, arguing that “the sad truth about politics is that most Republican Cain supporters were probably more delighted by that statement than anything Cain had to say about his ridiculous 999 tax plan.” But in running for President, something O’Donnell called a “book-selling, income enhancing stunt” that had doing much harm to his wife. But that comment was not only hurtful to most black voters– who are indeed registered Democrat– but to his wife, who did the same. “Gloria Cain was very probably an Obama voter in 2008,” he noted.

“Every husband has something to apologize for to his wife, and every wife has something to apologize for to her husband,” O’Donnell concluded, “but saying that she was brainwashed into voting Democratic would be a good place for Herman Cain to begin his apologies.”

The segment via MSNBC below:

Lawrence O’Donnell Blasts The Media For Not Calling Mitt Romney A Liar

Alex Alvarez — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 04:33:01 +0000

On Wednesday night’s The Last Word, host Lawrence O’Donnell set his sights on recent campaign ads by Rick Perry and, to a larger extent, Mitt Romney with regards to an out-of-context statements from President Obama… and on how the media has treated these.

Obama, you may recall, recently opined that the country had been “lazy” in presenting itself as a desirable place in which foreign nations like, say, China would want to invest. But a recent campaign ad for Perry presented the comment as if Obama were commenting on Americans themselves. O’Donnell (being, you know, Lawrence O’Donnell) made a crack about how Perry cannot seem to remember three consecutive bullet points, much less all ten commandments, #9 in particular.

O’Donnell then moved on to Romney:

When you spend every day of your life lying about your first name… [Clip of Romney decidedly not saying that his first name is, in fact, "Willard" during the most recent GOP debate] The man’s first name is Willard, as regular viewers of his program have known for over a year. If Willard will lie about that, then nothing Willard says probably feels like lying. If there is a pathological liar there in the presidential campaign, it is Willard Romney.

He was asked about his lying today, but the question was phrased, of course, in the limp-brained language of the campaign press.

Finally, O’Donnell tore into the mainstream, establishment media for apparently refusing to explicitly call out lies made by campaigning candidates:

Liars like Romney are profoundly bad for this country, but the mainstream media will never call what Romney does lying. And then they will run endless articles filled with the surprise and angst that American voter turnout is as low as it is, that the American voter is dispirited and uninterested in voting

The mainstream media helps deliver candidates to the ballot by never calling them liars, and then is surprised that Americans don’t want to stand in line to vote for the likes of Mitt Romney.

Have a look at the segment, via MSNBC:

Lawrence O’Donnell: Newt Gingrich Is The New Herman Cain

James Crugnale — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:55:25 +0000

Lawrence O’Donnell scrutinized Republican frontrunner Newt Gingrich‘s comments that he had never lobbied Congress, finding many contradictions to his claim. “Newt Gingrich is the new Herman Cain,” O’Donnell declared. “They were both lobbyists. They have both now enjoyed being front-runners in the Republican presidential campaign and they are both on their way to being losers.”

On his program Monday evening, O’Donnell played multiple videos of Gingrich unequivocally denying he had done lobbying.

“I have never done any lobbying,” Gingrich claimed during a GOP debate. “Every contract was written during the period when I was out of the office, specifically said I would do no lobbying, and I offered advice. And my advice as a historian, when they walked in and said to me, “We are now making loans to people who have no credit history and have no record of paying back anything, but that’s what the government wants us to do,” as I said to them at the time, this is a bubble. This is insane. This is impossible.”

George Will Dismisses Newt Gingrich, Scoffs At Idea That He Is A ‘Historian’

O’Donnell juxtaposed Gingrich’s denials with George Will‘s blunt observation that the former Speaker of the House “embodied almost everything disagreeable about modern Washington,” saying:

People think his problem is his colorful personal life. He’s going to hope people concentrate on that rather than on, for example, ethanol. Al Gore has recanted ethanol. Not Newt Gingrich who served the ethanol lobby. Industrial policy of the sort that got us Solyndra. Freddie Mac he said hired him as a historian. The Bush Administration was trying to pass a large entitlement in the prescription drug entitlement. Right wing social engineering. He sits down and talks about cap and trade and climate change with Nancy Pelosi and others. The list goes on.

But the coup de grâce in the MSNBC’s smackdown of Gingrich came with his citation of a damning Washington Examiner exposé that refuted his notion that he had never lobbied:

Three former Republican congressional staffers told me that Gingrich was calling around Capitol Hill and visiting Republican congressmen in 2003 in an effort to convince conservatives to support a bill expanding Medicare to include prescription-drug subsidies.
(…)
One former House staffer told me of a 2003 meeting hosted by Rep. Jack Kingston where Gingrich spoke. Kingston would regularly host “Theme Team” meetings with a few Republican congressmen and some of their staff. Just before the House vote, Gingrich was the special guest at this meeting, and he brought one message to the members: Pass the drug bill for the good of the Republican Party.
(…)
Two aides to other GOP members who had been resisting the bill told me their bosses were lobbied by Gingrich over the phone, sometimes citing politics, sometimes citing substance. And it worked. “Newt Gingrich moved votes on the prescription-drug bill,” one conservative staffer told me. “That’s for sure.”

Watch O’Donnell scrutinize Gingrich’s lobbying denials below via MSNBC:

Michael Moore: UC Davis Pepper Spray Incident ‘Resonates’ With The World Like Tiananmen Square

Frances Martel — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 04:47:02 +0000

With the Occupy movement having left Wall Street definitively this weekend after footage surfaced of students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed en masse, its most vocal unofficial spokespeople have taken to the airwaves to praise the students for their efforts. Not to be left behind is Michael Moore, who spoke to Lawrence O’Donnell today and one of the students attacked, Kase Wheatley, telling the latter that the image of him and his colleagues being pepper sprayed would be received by the world the same way the images of Tiananmen Square were.

Moore’s first statement on air was an apology to Wheatley for what had happened to him. “Campus police have turned into armies that have been militarized,” he argued, noting the small size of the protest group– eleven students– and declaring, “the images have resonated around the world in the same way the lone man standing in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square resonated.” “It is an iconic movement in Occupy Wall Street history,” he continued, “people will remember months and year from now that UC Davis was the moment Occupy Wall Street went to college campuses.”

O’Donnell turned then after the break back to Wheatley to discuss the leadership of his college, and what he hoped to see happen in the future. Wheatley called for the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi and for “everyone in this system [to be] democratically elected” such that they could be held accountable to the students paying tuition. Moore agreed, adding that the decision to attack the students was “absolutely disgusting and appalling,” particularly as the police had “not arrested a single banker, a single loan shark, a single health care executive… people who stole the futures of young people like Kase, people who have rigged the system of student loans.”

As for comments from Republicans against the protesters– particularly Newt Gingrich‘s demand at last Saturday’s Republican debate that the protesters “take a bath”– Moore joked, “they were literally bathing them– with pepper spray!”

The interview with Moore and Wheatley via MSNBC below:

Goldie Taylor Inspired To Share Her Own Story Of Sexual Abuse By Anger Over Penn St. Scandal

Alex Alvarez — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:20:36 +0000

TheGrio.com’s Goldie Taylor appeared on The Last Word last night, sharing with host Lawrence O’Donnell her own personal experience with sexual abuse in the wake of the Penn State rape scandal.

O’Donnell pointed out that, earlier, Taylor had tweeted that she had been angered over the scandal’s cover-up by those at PSU, but later felt “ashamed that I never had the courage to tell my own story.”

If she can be angry at adults for not speaking out on behalf of young victims in this case, Taylor asked, how can she not also be upset for not having advocated for herself?

In my case, it was a high school football coach. I was a varsity cheerleader in Missouri. And there were other women like me, and I knew it at the time. And, in my own fear of being shamed and blamed, even as a growing person, as an adult, a mother of children now, I felt like I had no safe harbor to tell it. But if I were going to challenge these adults at Penn State to tell it, if I were going to challenge other people to speak up and speak out, I said yesterday afternoon, then why not me?

And so I started to Tweet about it. And as people began to respond, I said, “Now’s the time.” And I would not wait another day.

There is never, ever a “silver lining” when it comes to rape, sexual abuse, or the exploitation of young children, but one does hope that those who have lived in fear, as Taylor admitted she had, can note that there is an empathetic community willing to aid them in seeking help, pursuing justice for crimes committed, and moving forward.

Here is Taylor’s experience, in her own words, via MSNBC:

Michael Moore And Jack Abramoff, United At Last On Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC Set

Frances Martel — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 17:39:29 +0000

Former lobbyist/corporate corruption poster boy who takes his sartorial cues from Spy vs. Spy Jack Abramoff hit the ground running with a new book straight out of prison, and if his foray to MSNBC is any indication, the left is willing to forgive and forget all that criminal stuff that got him in trouble. Take, for instance, filmmaker/limousine liberal poster boy (who doesn’t really have any funny sartorial choices, sorry) Michael Moore, who lauded Abramoff for “coming clean” and declared there was “no more powerful person” to fight corruption than him.

As the two both had interviews on The Last Word, this interaction between the face of corporate corruption and one of the most prominent faces of anti-capitalism in America came face-to-face thanks to the magic of Lawrence O’Donnell, and both parties had nothing but positive things to report. Moore appeared thrilled to see a story of redemption such as Abramoff’s, explaining that the crimes going on behind the scenes are best understood by those committing them, and that someone so deeply involved in creating the problem is now working to fight it by exposing the infection is wonderful news. “He is 100% revealing everything and encouraging the American people to stop people like him,” Moore argued, “that’s a very powerful thing to do.”

Moore explained that the interaction was short and consisted in a handshake and Moore leaning in and saying “God bless you for coming clean and making amends and saying what needs to be said… there’s no more powerful person to say it than you, Jack, because you were there.” Moore did describe Abramoff as “a bit of a broken man,” but working to repair himself as a victim of the system. Abramoff, meanwhile, noted that Moore was “gracious” and seemed pleased to receive such a warm reception.

With America as polarized as the media loves to claim it is, such a display of unity between an decades-old and newly reformed anti-corporatists may be heralded as a sign of peace in our time being a viable possibility, at least for those on the left. The right may be a little more suspicious of this more-civil-than-expected union.

The segment via MSNBC below:

Touré: Cain Scandal Feeds Off ‘Instinctual Fear’ Of Black Men ‘Being Dominating’ With White Women

Frances Martel — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 03:57:30 +0000

With a new woman, Karen Kraushaar, coming out today publicly to accuse Herman Cain of sexual harassment, Lawrence O’Donnell brought on MSNBC contributors Touré and Goldie Taylor to discuss today’s developments. Touré in particular noticed a pattern that may be developing with Kraushaar coming to the fore: all the women accusing Cain are white and blonde, which he argued feeds into an “instinctual fear” white men have of their women being accosted by black men.

“I can’t go any further without pointing out that it’s yet another blonde white woman who is accusing him of doing and saying things that are inappropriate,” Touré told O’Donnell, noting that this was worth mentioning because “the instinctual fear in America of black men being sexually inappropriate or aggressive or dominating with white women is very, very deep.” He did believe that this would hurt the Cain campaign because “people start to feel this on a deep level: ‘He keeps going after our women– we don’t like this!’” However, Cain benefited, he concluded, from the fact that he was “the last stop before Romneyville,” and Republicans were very much not happy with the inevitability of nominating Romney.

Taylor disagreed, noting that sexual harassment was equally heinous despite what the women looked like and arguing race was not a factor. She also noted that the attacks on the accusers’ children, particularly from Rush Limbaugh, were out of bounds: “they are not fair game.”

The segment via MSNBC below: