'Utterly useless': MSNBC host rips his own network in brutal takedown of Trump coverage

09 August 2024

MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell didn't pull any punches in blasting news outlets — including his own — for what he viewed as a total failure to "fact-check every lie" in former President Trump's Thursday press conference.

The 2024 Republican presidential nominee held a rambling, hour-long presser in which he made multiple baseless and spurious claims about Vice President Kamala Harris, Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz (Harris' running mate), the sizes of the crowds at their rallies and numerous other topics. As the Daily Beast recounted, O'Donnell noted in his segment that every news outlet that covered Trump on Thursday failed to thoroughly fact-check him, which he argued enables more of Trump's lies to endure.

"It would be hard to find a sentence in what Donald Trump said today that did not include at least one lie,” O’Donnell said. “Some of the networks tried to play catchup with fact-checking after Donald Trump finished speaking, but that, of course, is way too late and utterly useless. No network even attempted to fact-check every lie Donald Trump told."

The failure of news outlets to fact-check the former president in a meaningful way wasn't just limited to cable news. On the social media platform Bluesky, Minnesota Reformer reporter Chris Ingraham blasted the New York Times' Jonathan Weisman for describing what Ingraham referred to as Trump's "garbled nonsense" as "an interesting dance."

One of the more jaw-dropping moments of Trump's press conference was when he described a helicopter ride with Harris' ex-boyfriend, Willie Brown, who is the former Democratic Speaker of the California Assembly, that supposedly had to make an emergency landing. However, the Times later reported that it wasn't Willie Brown in. the helicopter with Trump, but former California Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, and no emergency landing was required. Brown told the paper there was no mention of Harris on that helicopter flight.

In his segment, O'Donnell regarded the media's treatment of Trump's third campaign for the White House as "2016 all over again," and that "the same mistakes are being made" in how major media outlets are inherently helping Trump by allowing him to get away with lying unchecked.

"I have never seen an industry slower at learning from its own stupid mistakes than the American news business, and you cannot expect them in the next 89 days to figure out what they haven’t been able to figure out in nine years: how to cover a Trump for president campaign," O'Donnell said.

Harvard law professor emeritus Laurence Tribe praised O'Donnell for his media critique, calling him "uniquely well informed, courageously candid, and on point."

"If only other news anchors would follow his lead. Truth is, they’re mostly not smart enough," he tweeted.

The MSNBC host followed up his segment with a tweet of his own, writing: "Literally the last thing I want to do is criticize the news media. I could do it every night for an hour. So when I do it, please understand that you’re hearing 1% of my complaints."

Click here to read the Beast's summary of O'Donnell's segment. And watch the segment itself below, or by clicking this link.

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