MSNBC Host Savages Hegseth Over ‘Drunk’-Sounding Presser On Trump Strikes: ‘Stupidest Public Lie Ever’

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell savaged Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over his “drunk”-sounding press conference on President Donald Trump’s Iran airstrikes, accusing him of telling “the stupidest public lie ever told by a secretary of defense.”

Hegseth held a Defense Department press conference Tuesday morning that was designed to bolster the administration’s claims that the strikes “completely obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, but devolved into equal parts boast-a-thon and lather-spewing barrage at reporters.

In the former category, Hegseth set social media ablaze with the claim that “President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history.”

On Thursday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Last Word, the host devoted his A-block to a blistering takedown of Hegseth that repeatedly invoked his alleged drinking problem and a rape allegation that came up during his confirmation process:

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Well, Pete Hegseth was reported to have had such a severe drinking problem while working as a weekend morning host at Fox that he promised Republican senators that he would not drink if they voted to confirm him as secretary of defense. And so we’re just going to have to assume that Pete Hegseth was stone cold sober today when he said something that sounds like it belongs in the great Comedy Central TV series Drunk History.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’DONNELL: It’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t be surprising for him to say if he still had his job at Fox and was drunk at a hotel bar. In 2017, a police report about Pete Hegseth being drunk in a hotel bar said that Pete Hegseth told the police, quote, that he was buzzed but not intoxicated during an encounter with a Republican woman who, after spending time in Pete Hegseth hotel room, filed a complaint with Monterey police claiming that she was raped.

No criminal charges were filed after the police investigation, and none of that information bothered Republicans in the Senate in any way when it came time to vote for Donald Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth as the secretary of defense.

But all of those senators, all those Republican senators, knew that as secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth was going to sound like a character in drunk history.

Let’s listen again to the stupidest public lie ever told by a secretary of defense.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HEGSETH: President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’DONNELL: Now, some secretaries of defense, particularly during the Vietnam war, found themselves telling worse lies. More important lies about their plans to win the war that we lost decisively. But those secretaries weren’t telling lies that were provably false in the moment that they said them.

A presumably sober Pete Hegseth actually said Donald Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history. Donald Trump directed nothing. Donald Trump said, go to a plan that has been in place for many, many years.

The Defense Department is filled with attack plans and war plans that it usually never uses, but always knows how to execute. Bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities is something the Defense Department has known how to do for as long as Iran was suspected of possibly developing nuclear weapons. President Obama could have done it simply by saying, go.

President Obama authorized the mission that took out Osama bin Laden. But that mission was designed by military professionals and was directed by military professionals after President Obama listened to the plan and simply said, go. That’s the way it works.

And that was a much more complex and secretive military operation than the bombing run Donald Trump publicly talked about before he authorized it. There was nothing secretive about the possibility that Donald Trump might approve the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Donald Trump publicly said that he might do that.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not publicly say that he might approve an invasion of Normandy on D-Day in World War II, sometime in the next two weeks. There’s nothing secretive about a president saying I might order the bombing sometime in the next two weeks, and there is nothing complex about a single bombing run over a country that has no air defenses left, because Israel took them out already.

The only thing the president of the United States said before the first atomic bomb was dropped at the end of World War II was go. President Harry Truman had nothing to do with the development of the atomic bomb. That was all done under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. President Harry Truman knew next to nothing about the secretive process of developing that bomb. He just knew that shortly after President Roosevelt died in office, Vice President Truman ascended to the presidency and that the bomb he found out about when he became president was ready to go.

And it was Harry Truman’s decision to make. He didn’t direct anything about the mission. He didn’t figure out what altitude the plane had to fly at, so that it wouldn’t be destroyed by the effects of the bomb that it dropped. Harry Truman didn’t figure out what the weather had to be over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Harry Truman didn’t figure out how much fuel it would take to get the aircraft back to safety.

But each of those bombing missions were the most complex and secretive bombing missions in military history. And they remain that, the only two bombing missions in which any country in the world has ever dropped an atomic bomb.

The bombing runs over north Vietnam were more complex, more secretive, and much more dangerous because those bombers could be and were shot down.

Pete Hegseth promised Republican senators that he would not drink if he became secretary of defense, but he did not promise that he wouldn’t sound drunk.

The single most complex and secretive military operation in history was, in fact, the D-Day invasion that has been the subject of hundreds of books, dozens and dozens of movies, none of which can capture the full complexity of the years of preparation and planning and the secretive, intense discipline that made D-Day the successful turning point in World War II, that it was.

Pete Hegseth tried to steal all of that and hand it to Donald Trump. Pete Hegseth tried to defend Donald Trump’s claim that Iran’s nuclear facilities were obliterated by the bombing. No one in the American military has made that claim.

And today, Pete Hegseth, in effect, seized the microphone when the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Dan Caine, was asked about the bombing damage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: General, on Sunday, you said final battle damage will take some time. And you also said, I think BDA is still pending and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there, that nuclear facility, is that was just over three days ago. So, what has changed? Would you use the term obliterated as well?

GEN. DAN CAINE, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: Sure. Like I said, we don’t do BDA. I’ll refer that to the intelligence community. And —

REPORTER: You’re talking with them. I mean, what changed in the past three days that make you so, you know —

CAINE: Sir, I think —

HEGSETH: I mean, I think I explained what changed. There was a great deal of irresponsible reporting based on leaks, preliminary information in low confidence. Again, when someone leaks something, they do it with an agenda. And when you leak a portion of an intelligence assessment, but just a little portion, just a little portion that makes it seem like maybe the strike wasn’t effective, then you start a new cycle, whether it’s “The Washington Post” or Fox News or CNN or MSNBC, you start a news cycle that starts to call into question the efficacy. That’s why.

So, you bring the chairman here who’s not involved in politics. He doesn’t do politics. That’s my lane to understand and translate and talk about those types of things, so I can use the word obliterated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’DONNELL: Well, he was a paid liar for Fox. So, of course, he can use any word he wants now that he’s Donald Trump’s appointed liar at the Defense Department.

Watch above via MSNBC’s The Last Word.