MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell should consider changing the name of his show from The Last Word to “…And Another Thing,” because once again he harped on a topic he bloviated about the night before ad nauseam. After snickering with Rachel Maddow and taking great joy in another assassination attempt on President Trump by Iranians the previous night, O’Donnell was back on Tuesday to talk about the Air Force One switcheroo. This time, he insisted Trump proved himself a “deeply cowardly man” for not personally going out and killing the would-be assassins like Harrison Ford in Air Force One.
While living in the liberal fantasy that their “resistance” to Trump was somehow akin to fighting Hitler and the Nazi’s, O’Donnell proclaimed it was Trump who had the warped, movie-inspired worldview:
To Donald Trump, heroism is something defined by movies, not by real life. And so, he thinks of heroism as nothing but movie tough guy heroism, a purely fake kind of invented heroism. That is why Donald Trump posts fake images of himself like this.
O’Donnell went on to mock Trump as a “deeply cowardly man” for not living up to “a fake movie character” and riding on Air Force One despite the threat. He reveled in how it was supposedly “undermining” “his own self-image”:
No president has ever done more than Donald Trump to reveal himself to be a deeply cowardly man. And no president other than Donald Trump would ever dream of trying to create a courageous image of himself by turning himself into a fake movie character and publishing a deeply perverse photograph like that one that we just showed you.
And so it is uniquely Donald Trump among American presidents who asks, wants to be judged on his personal bravery and all around tough guy toughness. And that is what makes Donald Trump's secret flight out of danger, uniquely undermining to both his own self-image and what he wants his most fanatic supporters to believe about him.
Lawrence O'Donnell suggests Trump is a "deeply cowardly man" for the Secret Service ensuring he was not assassinated by Iran. He mocks the USSS efforts to keep him alive and attacks Trump for not personally killing the Iranian assassins like Harrison Ford in a movie:
"To Donald… pic.twitter.com/Ewh8Bju1hB— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) August 12, 2026
“Donald Trump has asked the world to see him as a movie hero, the physically bravest president ever, when he is clearly the laziest president ever, who obviously spends more time in golf carts than he does thinking about governing, which obviously he never does,” O’Donnell sneered.
The unhinged ranting continued with O’Donnell going on about how Trump didn’t live up to President James Marshall, Harrison Ford’s character from the movie Air Force One since he didn’t personally go and kill his would-be assassins:
Donald Trump is the only president who has, in effect, asked to be compared to movie heroes. And so, Peter Baker of The New York Times wisely turned to Andrew Marlowe, who wrote the screenplay for the 1997 giant box office hit Air Force One, starring Harrison Ford as the bravest president ever imagined by Hollywood, who has to save everyone on Air Force One, including himself, after the plane has been hijacked.
Spoiler alert: President Harrison Ford did the impossible and, of course, personally killed the hijackers.
Up until last night, that's the way Donald Trump wanted his most fanatical followers to see him, as the Harrison Ford president who would personally kill anyone threatening Air Force One.
While downplaying the obvious that we don’t live in a movie, O’Donnell took a sick pleasure in Marlowe telling The New York Times, “I'm not sure I could ever script a moment like that for a heroic main character.”
On a side note, President Marshall is not the bravest president “imagined” by Hollywood. That distinction belongs to President Thomas J. Whitmore from Independence Day played by Bill Pullman. In addition to his rousing speech, he personally led humanity’s last stand against an alien force bent on our extinction from the pilot seat of his F/A-18 Hornet.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
MS NOW’s The Last Word
August 12, 2026
10:04:30 p.m. Eastern(…)
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: To Donald Trump, heroism is something defined by movies, not by real life. And so, he thinks of heroism as nothing but movie tough guy heroism, a purely fake kind of invented heroism. That is why Donald Trump posts fake images of himself like this.
No president has ever done more than Donald Trump to reveal himself to be a deeply cowardly man. And no president other than Donald Trump would ever dream of trying to create a courageous image of himself by turning himself into a fake movie character and publishing a deeply perverse photograph like that one that we just showed you.
And so it is uniquely Donald Trump among American presidents who asks, wants to be judged on his personal bravery and all around tough guy toughness. And that is what makes Donald Trump's secret flight out of danger, uniquely undermining to both his own self-image and what he wants his most fanatic supporters to believe about him.
Donald Trump has asked the world to see him as a movie hero, the physically bravest president ever, when he is clearly the laziest president ever, who obviously spends more time in golf carts than he does thinking about governing, which obviously he never does.
Donald Trump is the only president who has, in effect, asked to be compared to movie heroes. And so, Peter Baker of The New York Times wisely turned to Andrew Marlowe, who wrote the screenplay for the 1997 giant box office hit Air Force One, starring Harrison Ford as the bravest president ever imagined by Hollywood, who has to save everyone on Air Force One, including himself, after the plane has been hijacked.
Spoiler alert: President Harrison Ford did the impossible and, of course, personally killed the hijackers.
Up until last night, that's the way Donald Trump wanted his most fanatical followers to see him, as the Harrison Ford president who would personally kill anyone threatening Air Force One.
Screenwriter Andrew Marlowe sees a problem for Donald Trump, the movie hero in the way he chose to escape danger by boarding a secret flight out of Turkey, while leaving Air Force One to take off as a decoy plane full of government officials and reporters, who would have been the targets of the threats against that plane from Iran that the secret service responded to by secretly moving Donald Trump from Air Force One to another plane; using a catering cart truck to do that.
Andrew Marlowe, the screenwriter who gave us Harrison Ford as the bravest president ever, told The New York Times, “‘Now, real life isn't a movie, but given the circumstances, I'm not sure I could ever script a moment like that for a heroic main character,’ Mr. Marlowe said.”
(…)
