The lying media enters the octagon! This time, on Thursday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s The Last Word, host Lawrence O’Donnell went fully unhinged over innocuous remarks from Secretary of State Marco Rubio at that day’s official memorandum of understanding (MOU) signing ceremony with UFC CEO Dana White.
Rubio gave a short speech praising the company for reflecting American values:
When President Kennedy announced that we were going to put a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth, no one thought that was possible, and we did it. We are a nation founded on doing what no one else dared to do, and no one else aspired to do.
And at some level, that's what this whole company, what UFC has been.
But O’Donnell, as he always does, turned right back around and made it all about Donald Trump:
That is some deeply perverted stuff. How desperately twisted can your mind be to compare President Kennedy's announced plan for American astronauts to reach the moon with Donald Trump's despicable vulgarity in bringing the UFC, the Ultimate Fighting Championship to the White House?
While it's clear that Trump is a big fan of wrestling, Rubio never once mentioned Trump by name in his speech, because the speech wasn’t about him, but evidently O’Donnell couldn’t resist another chance, no matter how slight, to display his severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome on camera.
Clearly, Rubio was talking about the United States of America “doing what no one else dared to do, and no one else aspired to do,” but O’Donnell acted like the nation’s name was Donald Trump:
He's [Rubio’s] right that no one, of course, aspired to do anything that Donald Trump is doing in the White House, anything that Donald Trump is doing to degrade the White House.
Never mind that Teddy Roosevelt was known for wrestling people inside the White House, or that Bill Clinton and JFK himself infamously degraded the place in "deeply perverted" and "despicably vulgar" ways.
O’Donnell then smeared Rubio as a liar:
Marco Rubio says 'no one believed JFK when he said we were going to do that.' He's lying. We did think it was possible. And President Kennedy simply saying it made more people believe it was possible... Everyone in the world could know then that the President of the United States would not have announced the plan to send astronauts to the moon unless the President knew it was possible, knew it could be done, and knew it would be done.
The left loves to draw fake historical parallels, but this one from O’Donnell makes even less sense than usual. President Kennedy’s promise that the United States would send a man to the moon by the end of the 1960s was so noteworthy because it was seen as impossible. Kennedy acknowledged that opinion himself, famously stating that America chooses to do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
So, maybe O’Donnell needs to calm down a little, switch out his hearing aid for one that doesn’t insert Trump’s name into random sentences, and read a history book.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
MS NOW's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
6/11/26
10:15:34 p.m. Eastern(…)
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: Donald Trump isn't the only desperate one on the Trump team. It seems the Trump cabinet has a desperate daily competition to see who can debase themselves by saying the most insane thing in praise of Donald Trump.
And today's clear winner was presidential candidate Marco Rubio.
[Cuts to video]
MARCO RUBIO: When President Kennedy announced that we were going to put a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth, no one thought that was possible, and we did it.
We are a nation founded on doing what no one else dared to do, and no one else aspired to do.
And at some level, that's what this whole company, what UFC has been.
[Cuts back to live]
O'DONNELL: That is some deeply perverted stuff. How desperately twisted can your mind be to compare President Kennedy's announced plan for American astronauts to reach the moon with Donald Trump's despicable vulgarity in bringing the UFC, the Ultimate Fighting Championship to the White House?
What Marco Rubio is right about is that no one else would dare to do that. And more importantly, he's right that no one, of course, aspired to do anything that Donald Trump is doing in the White House, anything that Donald Trump is doing to degrade the White House.
But what Marco Rubio is lying about is that when President Kennedy announced that we were going to put a man on the moon, saying 'no one thought that was impossible - that no one thought that was possible,' that's a lie.
Marco Rubio says 'no one believed JFK when he said we were going to do that.' He's lying. We did think it was possible. And President Kennedy simply saying it made more people believe it was possible.
People around the world believed it was possible to send someone to the moon because the President of the United States said it was. And then, of course, the United States proved it was possible and did it.
Everyone knew. Everyone in the world could know then that the President of the United States would not have announced the plan to send astronauts to the moon unless the President knew it was possible, knew it could be done, and knew it would be done.
And now the whole world knows, after The Washington Post documented Donald Trump telling over 30,000 lies in his first term in the White House, that if Donald Trump says it, the whole world knows it's probably a lie.
(…)
