MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Slams ‘Degraded’ CNN for Paying ‘Rabid’ Scott Jennings to ‘Lie’ About Trump

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell slammed CNN on Monday as an “absurdly degraded” network as he blasted its CEO, Mark Thompson, for paying “rabid” conservative pundit Scott Jennings to “lie about Donald Trump.”

O’Donnell’s tirade came as he discussed media moguls playing to President Trump to seal business mergers before he argued the rival network, too, was “compromised” and used Jennings as a case in point.

CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery’s stock jumped last week after CEO David Zaslav revealed that the company has attracted “multiple parties” interested in a potential acquisition. The disclosure came as the media giant announced its board had launched a “strategic review” following recent “unsolicited interest.”

The move effectively signals that WBD is open to offers, with CBS parent firm Paramount Global, now under David Ellison’s leadership, reportedly among those pursuing a deal.

O’Donnell unloaded on Zaslav to begin with, claiming his ownership has quashed editorial freedom:

CNN is already owned by a right-wing Trump supporter and has compromised itself accordingly. The firing started right away in that new regime. That’s why Jim Acosta is no longer there and others are no longer there. And everyone who remains has become much more careful in anything they might even think of saying about Donald Trump.

Rounding on Jennings, the host continued:

And now CNN eagerly pays a Trump supporter to lie on CNN every day and night for Donald Trump. CNN did this during the first Trump presidential campaign and presidency. CNN regularly paid Trump supporters to lie about Trump on CNN. But the CNN regime then realized that was a mistake, and they stopped doing it. They stopped paying for lies.

He then pointed to Thompson, whom he blasted for pandering to the president by keeping Jennings on the air:

But then CNN got a new head, the head of CNN for the last three years, hired by the Trump supporting owner and operator of CNN, is an Englishman who thinks paying Scott Jennings to lie about Donald Trump is money very well spent. Scott Jennings, who used to be an aide to Senator Mitch McConnell, was not always a rabid, lying Trump supporter. When he first started appearing on television, he was capable of criticizing some of the more extreme Trump positions but Scott Jennings figured out where the money is and how he could get his own podcast and decided to become the ‘JD Vance of CNN.’

O’Donnell then continued to mock comments made by “the lost in America Englishman” Thompson in an interview with Mediaite’s Colby Hall as the “single goofiest thing ever said by anyone in charge of CNN” for defending Jennings as “D’Artagnan” – one of the fictional French Three Musketeers from the famous novel by Alexandre Dumas.

Thompson likened the pundit to having his “sword out” and jousting with a Democrat stacked panel each night on CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip, adding Jennings made for “good television” and a “deeper testing” of liberal ideas.

O’Donnell followed:

Good television. Here’s how bad that television is that they make over there. The show that Scott Jennings frequents the most is on opposite this program. And that show on a good night gets half half of the audience of this show. This program usually has an audience triple the size of the terrible, terrible television that Scott Jennings is delivering on the absurdly degraded version of CNN, presided over by the man who thinks lying for Donald Trump on TV is an honorable pursuit and should be paid for by CNN. Scott’s like D’Artagnan, he says.

As the clip went viral, Jennings mockingly sniped back on X: “No, Lawrence, I do not have time to save your show.”

A CNN source offered an even more scathing takedown of O’Donnell’s tirade against Thompson, telling Mediaite: “Wonder if Lawrence’s audience knew he resented immigrants this much. He may be interested to know ‘the lost in America Englishman’ is an American citizen.”

Watch above via MSNBC.