Tuesday night on MSNBC’s The Last Word, host, Lawrence O’Donnell made absurd claims about President Trump, going as far as to accuse him of treason. To begin, O’Donnell quoted the President’s comments earlier that day about the death of Kim Jong-un’s brother: “I saw the information about the CIA with respect to his brother or half-brother and I would tell him that would not happen under my auspices. That’s for sure.”
O’Donnell interpreted this typically non-problematic statement as: “So the President of the United States is telling Kim Jong-un he would not have used his brother as a CIA informant, and he seems to be telling Kim Jong-un he won't use anyone as an informant against the most dangerous and murderous dictator on Earth.” O’Donnell ‘seems’ to be making hasty assumptions of a stance typically taken when conducting diplomatic negotiations, of disavowing spying on adversaries.
He continued: “We have heard the word treason used more during the Trump Presidency than at any time since World War II, which was actually the last time anyone was found guilty of treason in this country.” The liberal host then went on to define treason and how it relates to the current President:
Every use of the word treason you have heard during the Trump years has been wrong technically because courts have essentially held that the legal definition of treason is giving aid and comfort to a country that is a formally declared enemy of the United States in a declaration of war, but what the President did today is as close as you can get to treason with a country that is not a subject of a formal declaration of war by the United States.
Ironically, a little over a year ago, O’Donnell was in agreement with a guest who was upset at the President for accusing Democrats of being treasonous. On that show, Washington Post columnist Max Boot told O’Donnell that “the Republican Party is not just looking the other way at Donald Trump’s atrocious conduct and his inexcusable rhetoric, including, for example, calling Democrats treasonous.”
O’Donnell went on to compare the situation with North Korea to the Cuban Missile crisis:
Now, let's just reset what President Trump did today to 1962, the year President John F. Kennedy faced the Cuban missile crisis… Imagine if the Wall Street Journal reported that Fidel Castro’s brother was a CIA informer and the next day President Kennedy publicly promised Fidel Castro that he would not allow the CIA to use an informer like that against Fidel Castro.
It’s a good thing that this is not the Cold War, and that in O’Donnell’s own words: “North Korea is not yet apparently capable of carrying out such an attack.”
O’Donnell concluded: “It is hard to be shocked by Donald Trump, now more than two years into the trump presidency, but even all of Donald Trump's admiring statements and trusting statements about Vladimir Putin, do not equal what he said today about Kim Jong-Un.” The same could be said of MSNBC, but every day their absurdity becomes more and more ‘shocking’.
Here is the transcript from the June 11 episode of The Last Word:
MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
06/11/19
10:05:27 PM ET
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: “I saw the information about the CIA with respect to his brother or half-brother and I would tell him that would not happen under my auspices. That's for sure.” So the President of the United States is telling Kim Jong-un he would not have used his brother as a CIA informant, and he seems to be telling Kim Jong-un he won't use anyone as an informant against the most dangerous and murderous dictator on Earth. We have heard the word treason used more during the Trump Presidency than at any time since World War II, which was actually the last time anyone was found guilty of treason in this country.
Every use of the word treason you have heard during the Trump years has been wrong technically because courts have essentially held that the legal definition of treason is giving aid and comfort to a country that is the formal declared enemy of the United States in a declaration of war, but what the President did today is as close as you can get to treason with a country that is not a subject of a formal declaration of war by the United States. North Korea is the only country in the 21st century that has specifically threatened the United States with Nuclear attack, although North Korea is not yet apparently capable of carrying out such an attack.
Now, let's just reset what President Trump did today to 1962, the year President John F. Kennedy faced the Cuban missile crisis and forced the Soviet Union to remove Nuclear missiles from Cuba. Imagine if the Wall Street Journal reported that Fidel Castro’s brother was a CIA informer and the next day President Kennedy publicly promised Fidel Castro that he would not allow the CIA to use an informer like that against Fidel Castro. President Kennedy would have been impeached and removed from office by the end of the week. It is hard to be shocked by Donald Trump, now more than two years into the trump presidency, but even all of Donald Trump's admiring statements and trusting statements about Vladimir Putin, do not equal what he said today about Kim Jong-Un.
