Lawrence O'Donnell

On the February 8 edition of MSNBC's "Last Word," left-wing comedian Bill Maher disparaged Bill O'Reilly as "unpatriotic" for the way in which the veteran Fox News anchor conducted his interview with President Barack Obama on Super Bowl Sunday.

"And Bill O'Reilly, who claims he's such a patriot, how unpatriotic in my view to treat a president that way," railed Maher. "How does that look to other countries when you're interrupting and belittling? I just find it astounding."

[Video embedded after the page break.]

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Wednesday had a very heated discussion with Congressman Steve King (R-Ia.) about Barack Obama's religious upbringing.

At one point, the "Last Word" host actually asked his guest, "How do we know you are not a Muslim?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The geniuses at MSNBC actually misspelled Bill O'Reilly's last name during a lengthy opening segment Monday bashing the Fox News star's interview with President Obama the previous day.

For the first minute and a half of the ten and a half minute "Last Word" piece, the graphic on a television screen behind and to the right of host Lawrence O'Donnell read "Interruptus O'Reilyus" (video follows with commentary):

Jon Stewart on Thursday marvelously lampooned Keith Olbermann and all his former colleagues that can't fill the "Olbermann-shaped hole" his departure has left at MSNBC.

The "Daily Show" host began the segment (video follows with partial transcript and commentary): 

In the wake of Monday's ruling by a Florida judge to toss out ObamaCare as a result of the individual mandate, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell asked liberal constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley Tuesday if the Democrats made a mistake not writing a severability clause into the law.

Turley surprisingly answered, "It was a colossal mistake" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Howard Kurtz on Sunday pointed out a delicious irony involving MSNBC and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).

After complaining about CNN's decision to air the Congresswoman's response to President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday, MSNBC spent the next several days giving far more attention to her than to the official GOP respondent (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NBC's Today show never covered Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen comparing Republicans to Nazis, but on Friday co-anchor Meredith Vieira determined Sarah Palin's mocking of Barack Obama's Winning the Future slogan as the precise moment when the new era of "civility" in Washington, came to an end. After Vieira opened this morning's show announcing: "End of civility? Sarah Palin takes a shot at President Obama's call for winning the future...is the new tone of togetherness in Washington already over?" she brought on MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell to chastise Palin and Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann:

"[Palin] really struggles with that sounding presidential thing. It's a real challenge for her. And you know, look it's, it's as weird as it gets. But really if you are looking for a lack of civility or the argumentative stuff...this week you really have to go to Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. No one else is doing it."

In a segment entitled "Remember Civility? Why Are Palin & GOP Stepping Up Criticism?" O'Donnell and Vieira took turns bashing the former Alaska Governor and Minnesota Congresswoman as seen in the follow January 28 exchange:

(video, audio and transcript after the jump)

It was to be expected that MSNBC commentators would publicly wish Keith Olbermann well after his surprise exit last Friday.

But the nonsense that spewed out of Lawrence O'Donnell's mouth Monday evening - "He invented op-ed TV...For eight years...No one in television history has ever done anything like it" - was so sycophantic and factually bereft it was almost sick-making (video follows with transcript and commentary):

 On Monday’s the Last Word show, in its new 8:00 p.m. time slot, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell referred to the manufacturers of high-capacity magazines as "merchants of death" who purchase "their political protection from the NRA." As he continued his push for a ban on magazines with 30 bullets in light of the Tucson shootings, O’Donnell dismissed a statement from the NRA which argued that such magazines are useful in self-defense, and went on to make his latest attack on the manufacturers:

So the merchants of death are buying their political protection from the NRA and leave us to stare at our children and wonder: Who among them will be the next nine-year-old their high-capacity magazines unload on? The next Christina Taylor Green.

He went on to plead with President Obama to talk about gun control in the State of the Union Address, or otherwise "become part of the problem." O’Donnell:

If the President follows Republican and Democratic tradition tomorrow night and says not a word about gun and ammunition control, if he does not use this moment of his increasing popularity, if he does not believe he has the communication skills to convey the necessity to control the capacity of automatic weapons, then I, for one, will become disappointed in him for the first time. And he will become part of the problem.

Editor's Note: The following is a brief statement released by NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center (MRC) president Brent Bozell earlier today regarding MSNBC firing Keith Olbermann.

It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Olbermann was a failure because he was vicious, insulting and off-the-charts liberal. And they replaced him with Lawrence O'Donnell, who is Olbermann but without talent. It is absolutely guaranteed that MSNBC will sink even lower. This network is clueless.

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NBC's failure to cover the Democratic congressman who compared Republicans to Nazis on the House floor trickled down to MSNBC yesterday, as anchor Lawrence O'Donnell neglected the story in favor of smearing House Speaker John Boehner and syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh.

After spending more than six minutes railing against House Republicans for repealing Obama's health care overhaul in a segment dubbed "Repeal & Misplaced," O'Donnell, a self-described socialist, omitted Rep. Steve Cohen's (D-Tenn.) remarks likening Republicans to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

At the top of his prime time program, O'Donnell took a partisan pot shot at Boehner (R-Ohio) for skipping the lavish state dinner for Chinese President Hu to fulfill his campaign promise to repeal the unpopular health care law.

In a fine example of the new civility at MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell on Tuesday actually yelled at an Arizona Congressman who didn't agree with him about the need for gun control following the shootings in Tucson.

The discussion on "The Last Word" really got heated after the host made the case to Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) that additional security at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' (D-Ariz.) Congress on Your Corner event wouldn't have mattered because "The overwhelming majority of bullets fired by police officers always miss their target" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

 Catching up on an item from the Tuesday, January 11, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC host O’Donnell blamed President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress of 2004 for some of the deaths in the Tucson shootings because they did not have the "basic human decency" to renew the assault weapons ban and require Jared Loughner to reload his weapon sooner. O’Donnell talked of learning which victims would be alive if not for Bush and Republicans. O’Donnell:

When the investigation reveals the exact order of the 31 shots fired, we will be able to do the grim accounting and tell you exactly, exactly who would be alive today if the Republican House, the Republican Senate and the Republican President had the basic human decency to do the right thing in 2004.

Later in the show, he quoted the spokesman of the National Rifle Association and tagged him as "soulless" for opposing a rush to pass new gun control laws. He went on to contend that the NRA believes "there should be absolutely no restrictions on access to guns," and suggested that the NRA wants to keep the murder rate in America above that in other countries. O’Donnell:

Quote, "Anything other than prayers for the victims and their families at this time would be inappropriate." So says the soulless spokesman for the National Rifle Association, the most successful special interest lobby in the history of lobbying. Success in lobbying is scored according to how difficult your case is. The NRA has a very difficult case to make, that there should be absolutely no restrictions on access to guns and bullets in this country, and that we must never allow our homicide rate to fall below any other country`s homicide rate.

A new poll just released by Quinnipiac University finds very few Americans agree with the media's view that heated political rhetoric was responsible for Saturday's tragic shootings in Tucson, Arizona.

What should also surprise all of the so-called journalists that have been accusing conservative politicians and pundits for inciting Jared Lee Loughner to commit this heinous act is that people feel liberals are more responsible for this rhetoric than folks on the right (emphasis added throughout):

Lawrence O'Donnell on Tuesday made a federal case out of Ann Coulter's quite accurate claim that liberals give less to charity than conservatives.

"The Last Word" host might have raised this issue to draw attention to a charity he's supporting (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

For the second night in a row, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell exposed a prominent liberal for being totally ignorant about the tax code.

His victim on Wednesday's "The Last Word" was liberal media darling Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), and this time O'Donnell had some assistance from two very unlikely participants (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

Lawrence O'Donnell on Tuesday surprisingly exposed how ignorant liberals are of the tax code.

In a sometimes heated discussion with prominent progressives about President Obama's new compromise tax plan, "The Last Word" host aggressively challenged the knowledge of two of his guests (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Such is the peril borne by the serial flatterer -- the flattery just might clang.

That's what happened when Lawrence O'Donnell appeared on MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow's show on Nov. 18 to discuss possible repeal of the don't ask, don't tell policy regarding gays in the military.

At the end of their discussion, Maddow thanked O'Donnell and said this (video after page break) --

MSNBC's prime-time "town hall" on immigration reform yesterday exemplified one of the more unseemly elements of media bias: brazen political advocacy disguised as an "honest conversation."

Attempting to pass itself off as a forum for voices on all sides of the immigration issue to elevate the dialogue, "Beyond Borderlines" featured droves of liberal guests who dismissed, admonished, and overwhelmed only token conservative opposition.

From the outset of the program, conservative guests were disadvantaged and drowned out. The "conversation," which touched on a wide-range of issues related to immigration reform, was steered by hosts Lawrence O'Donnell, who is a self-described socialist, and Maria Teresa Kumar, who is executive director of Voto Latino, a liberal immigration reform group.

Mike Cutler, one of the few guests who offered a contrasting perspective on the issue, was repeatedly attacked by Kumar, who oscillated between the conflicting roles of questioner and answerer, and the other panelists.

 Appearing as a guest on Monday’s Last Word, MSNBC contributor and Princeton University Associate Professor Melissa Harris-Perry claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama have pushed a "sort of center right" agenda as she defended Pelosi’s decision to stay on to lead House Democrats despite her party’s defeat. As she missed the point that most moderate Democrats hold conservative-leaning districts where Pelosi and Obama are unpopular, she suggested that moderate Democrats fared poorly in the elections because they were not supportive enough of Pelosi and Obama. Harris-Perry:

It may be, in fact, that precisely what the party needs is to learn the lesson of 2010. In 2010, it was the Blue Dogs who lost most heavily as any individual category of Democrats, that the group most repudiated by voters in this election were those Democrats who didn't get on board with Pelosi's agenda, who ran against President Obama's agenda. The notion that we should now discontinue a Pelosi/Obama sort of forward-moving progressive agenda, and it's not that progressive, I mean, it's sort of center right, and the idea that we should move to the right of that agenda, I think, is exactly misreading what happened in 2010.

The Hill is reporting that America's only admitted socialist member of Congress on Tuesday said he would seek to block the merger of Comcast with NBC as a result of Keith Olbermann's suspension last week (h/t NBer Beukeboom):

The Baltimore Sun's media critic is still fuming about MSNBC's pathetic coverage on election night.

In his piece published Saturday, David Zurawik called the cable news network a "liberal prep school" while claiming the behavior of folks like Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Keith Olbermann was "so egregious" that the "entire realm of TV journalism was diminished in the public mind":

The same day an MSNBC host admitted to being a socialist on national television, America's only openly socialist member of Congress came out in defense of Keith Olbermann after the "Countdown" host was suspended indefinitely for violating NBC's campaign finance rules.

If you needed any more proof of just how far to the left this so-called news network is, you should look no further than what Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) published at the Huffington Post Friday:

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell admitted on national television Friday that he's a socialist.

In the middle of a heated debate with Salon's Glenn Greenwald on "Morning Joe," O'Donnell said, "I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left, the extreme left of you mere liberals" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

Lawrence "Crazy Larry" O'Donnell was back to his former self during MSNBC's Election Night coverage Tuesday. During the 9 p.m. EDT hour the MSNBC anchor claimed that if Rand Paul holds to his "principles" and filibusters an attempt to raise the debt ceiling, it would destroy the United States' credit rating and possibly spark a worldwide depression. O'Donnell also pressed House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on the matter.

After Cantor refused to give O'Donnell a direct answer to his oddball question, the frustrated MSNBC host ranted that he didn't want to see Cantor on MSNBC again.

In the beginning segment, O'Donnell was giving commentary after live coverage of Rand Paul's victory speech. Paul, he noted, will soon be pressed to vote on raising the debt ceiling, something which O'Donnell asserted is vital to the health of the U.S. economy.  
 

Bill Maher and MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell went to great lengths on Friday's "Real Time" to disparage the Tea Party.

One proud member, National Review's Reihan Salam, admirably put them both in their place for doing so (video follows with transcript and commentary):