MS NOW Decries Trump's ‘Temple of Violence’ on White House Grounds

According to the leftist media, every move that President Trump makes must be likened to any other act of evil or brutality that was ever recorded in history, no matter how ridiculous the comparison. Lawrence O’Donnell, host of The Last Word on the failing network MS NOW, followed this rule without hesitation on his Wednesday night broadcast. O’Donnell claimed, laughably, that “Donald Trump is desecrating the White House grounds to build a temple of violence,” as if Trump was some kind of Roman emperor.

O’Donnell must have forgotten that Biden actually desecrated the White House by allowing a man with fake breasts to go topless on the lawn. He also forgot that the Ancient Romans never built “a temple to violence.” They did, however, build the famous Colosseum and other amphitheaters where violence was displayed on a near daily basis.

He also described UFC matches as gladiatorial fights on his show:

Trump and the men who will join him to worship the gladiator skills on display where there was once a rose garden don't know the history of this country and don't want to, and seem to believe that savage combat is really what this country is about.

While falsely smearing the President for not knowing the history of the United States, O’Donnell didn’t know the basic differences between a theater and a temple. We should pray that he doesn’t walk into a Broadway theater expecting a worship service, or into St. Patrick’s Cathedral for a Shakespeare performance.

 

 

Another thing O’Donnell apparently didn’t know the difference between was where the White House Rose Garden is versus its helipad. Twice in the segment, O’Donnell claimed the UFC ring was being built over where the Rose Garden once was, despite the fact that the ring is located on the White House’s South Lawn. The Rose Garden patio is on the West side, adjacent to but not actually on the South Lawn. The UFC ring replaced the helipad, not the Rose Garden.

O’Donnell also denied that America’s history was about “savage combat,” - an interesting claim to make on the eve of its 250th birthday, when the then-colonies broke away from England through a bloody war that lasted over eight years and cost more than 25,000 American lives.

We just celebrated Memorial Day, honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice for this nation. America’s powerful military has been constantly involved in violent conflicts around the world, and over 1.3 million American service members have laid down their lives in its service. And yet, O’Donnell, who never served in the military, claimed that it was not about combat and even attacked “men like Donald Trump” who “have never engaged in physical combat themselves.”

O’Donnell and his on-air guest, leftist race-hustler Professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr., ragged on President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance for promoting what they claim was a false history of America:

They're going to tell a story of the country that, in so many ways, denies its tragic beginnings, denies its contradictions in order to secure their fantasies and illusion and myth. 

The real fantasy, illusion, and myth here is that America was founded in tragedy. Rather, all patriots know that America was founded in greatness, sacrifice, and heroism, and continues to embody these ideals in a very real way, 250 years later.

The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:

MS NOW's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
Wednesday, May 27, 2026
10:49:09 p.m. Eastern

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: As we learn in Eddie Glaude's important new book, America, U.S.A., How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries. In his book, Professor Glaude writes, 'American anniversaries are often moments to turn a blind eye to the evils of the past and the present, to suppress the fact of America's divided soul.'

And that is what Donald Trump is determined to do for this nation's upcoming 250th birthday. Donald Trump is desecrating the White House grounds to build a temple of violence where there was once a Rose Garden, and where there will next be an ugly and utterly pointless exhibition of men trying to savage - savagely beat each other as part of the Trump White House celebration of America's 250th birthday.

Trump and the men who will join him to worship the gladiator skills on display where there was once a Rose Garden don't know the history of this country and don't want to, and seem to believe that savage combat is really what this country is about, even though men like Donald Trump have never engaged in physical combat themselves. 

(...)
10:52:24 p.m. Eastern

O’DONNELL: Joining us now is Eddie S. Glaude Jr., distinguished university professor of African American studies at Princeton University and an MS NOW political analyst. His new book, America, U.S.A., How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries, is available right now, today.

Professor Glaude, it's so great to have you here. And I want to thank you because I learned so much both reading and listening to this book. I'm a double dipper. I listen to it in the car. I've been reading it at home and - and here we go again, it seems for the 250th.

PROF. EDDIE S. GLAUDE JR.: Yeah. You know, first of all, thank you so much, Lawrence. 

I think it's important for us to understand that this divided soul, this idea of America as a beacon of freedom and a white republic, can't be held at once without contradiction. And I think because of this division, this doubleness, right, it deposits a kind of madness at the heart of the country, which leads us, puts us in these cycles. 

And so here we are in the 250th, with J.D. Vance invoking 'blood and soil' and Donald Trump having the manly manliness of the gladiators of the UFC. They're going to tell a story of the country that in so many ways denies its tragic beginnings, denies its contradictions in order to secure their fantasies and illusion and myth.

O'DONNELL: You make the point as you look back at every one of the big ones, that if you go back 50 years to the 200th in 1976, Vietnam was so recent, and the tragedies of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, those things were so recent that they couldn't even pretend to do something serious. And - and it just became a kind of a trinket selling event.

GLAUDE: Yeah, yeah. Big business stood in, you know, this was - the centennial bicentennial was very different because of television, kind of mass consumer culture. You could buy all sorts of, you know, bicentennial trinkets from whoopee cushions to - to, you know, red, white and blue hamburgers, right? I even remember a picture, a photograph of myself in tri-colored pants as I was an eight-year-old taking my school pictures, right? 

But in an interesting sort of way, the kind of conflict, the fissures, the fragmentation, made the desire for consensus so much more intense. As you remember, Lawrence, right, there is this sense that we had to be unified in light of Watergate, in light of Vietnam, in light of the black power movement. And what you have instead are these moments of intense contradiction being made manifest. And what I write about in the book, of course, are the anti-bussing protests in Boston and that iconic image of the teenager attacking a black lawyer with the American flag.

O'DONNELL: Yes, that was happening in the shadow of that - that birthday. It was 1975, and there you go, the next year, 1976. It was really an incredible time in the country. Professor - I just cannot thank you enough for this book, I have to say, I learned so much. Perfectly timed, obviously, for the 250th anniversary coming up. Professor Eddie Glaude, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

GLAUDE: Thank you for having me. I appreciate you.