‘Pure Hallucination!’ MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell Flays ‘Madman’ Trump Over Bonkers Cabinet Meeting Rant

MS NOW host Lawrence O’Donnell flayed “madman” President Donald Trump over a Cabinet meeting rant that he described as a “pure hallucination” that drew laughter from the people who wield the 25th Amendment power to remove him.

Trump held a Cabinet meeting Thursday that featured a characteristic surplus of fawning moments, but ended without question time from the press.

On Thursday night’s edition of MS NOW’s The Last Word, O’Donnell singled out a stretch devoted to Trump recounting an “insane” conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron:

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: In the cabinet room today, the president, whose policies and decisions led to the murder in the streets of Minneapolis, hallucinated about phone conversations that never happened with leaders of foreign countries in which he told them that they will have to increase the price of prescription drugs in their countries so that the price of prescription drugs in the United States can come down. That formulation is obviously insane on its face. The price of prescription drugs in foreign countries is lower than in the United States because the governments of those countries set the price of prescription drugs. They have price controls.

They use the same kind of price controls that this country used in World War II. Democrats have been trying to get that kind of price control on prescription drugs for decades in the — in this country. But Republicans, very much including Donald Trump, oppose the government controlling the price of prescription drugs. And so we don’t have price controls. And that’s why our drugs are more expensive.

None of that was apparently understood by a single person in the Trump cabinet room today. And their reaction to Donald Trump completely inventing conversations that never happened in an apparent hallucination was to laugh.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I spoke with Macron. He was the first one. He was not at that time wearing sunglasses.

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: And he said — he said, no, no, Donald, I will not do this. I will not. I won’t even consider. You’re asking me to double the price. I said, you have no choice. You have to do it. Because you guys have been ripping us off. In other words, the whole world — we’ve been subsidizing the whole world on drug costs. That’s why they were $10 and we’d be at 130, as an example, there were many examples. I could give you examples even worse.

He said, no, no, no, I will not do that. And I said, yes, you will, 100 percent you’ll do it, I said. He said, no, I won’t do that, Donald. You’re asking me to double the cost of our prescription. We will not do that. I mean, look, you’ve been ripping us off now for decades. We’re not going to do it anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’DONNELL: The French president doesn’t control the price of drugs in France. Pure hallucination from start to finish. He went on and on about this hallucination, pretending that he had this conversation with several — several other unnamed heads of state. He didn’t have this conversation with anyone. And every one of those laughing people in that room know that he did not have that conversation with anyone.

And he doesn’t understand that France does not set the price of prescription drugs in the United States. Donald Trump actually said in his hallucination to the president of France, you’ve been ripping us off now for decades. He’s blaming France for the price of a product made in the United States and sold in the United States of America. For a president of the United States, that, that alone is as close as you could ask for publicly for proof of dementia. A president is supposed to understand just how demented that insane formulation is that he just offered. It is absolute proof that the person has no idea what he’s talking about in any way.

And the long, detailed nuttiness of this hallucination that went on and on and on got more and more laughs. And it was happening right in front of the group that has the power as they sit there, even, to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove the president from his office because of mental incompetence, which is what they were watching.

But worse than the mental incompetence of not just Donald Trump in that room is the moral vacancy of everyone in that room. That’s the required ticket to enter that room, utter moral vacancy. Washington used to have something known as the principled resignation. People resigned their positions in the government because of something the administration did that they considered morally beyond the pale.

Three officials actually resigned in the Clinton administration when Bill Clinton agreed to support Newt Gingrich’s Republican welfare repeal bill. In pre-Trump Washington, there would be resignations in a presidential administration that shot and murdered people in the streets of Minneapolis. Not one, not one of the Trump faithful servants in the Trump cabinet room today would ever consider resigning over murder.

And so they sit and they laugh at the hallucinations of a madman and speak only when Donald Trump allows them to. And the laughter of the Trump quislings is the sound of the moral rot that surrounds and supports the retreating Donald Trump tonight.

Watch above via MS NOW’s The Last Word.

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