While discussing answers by former and likely future presidential candidates on whether they have ever used drugs, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell invoked President Barack Obama’s book Dreams From My Father on Tuesday to cite Obama’s answer to the question in what became a gushing tribute that included a nearly three-minute-long reading from the book.
During the “Rewrite” portion of his show The Last Word, O’Donnell proclaimed that the memoir was the “most honest,” “open,” “artful,” and “finest literary work ever authored by a President of the United States” despite the book not containing “the whole truth of Barack Obama's life.”
O’Donnell began his mushy tribute by describing Obama’s admission as “the most honest answer ever given to drug use question” at a time “long before we ever saw Barack Obama give a speech” and “long before he was running for president.”
From there, O’Donnell only ratcheted up the fluffy rhetoric:
He had written the answer in a book called Dreams From My Father. It stands today as the finest literary work ever authored by a President of the United States. The book doesn't contain the whole truth of Barack Obama's life. Books can't do that, but it is, by far, the most honest and open book and artful book ever written by a president.
What followed next was a two-minute-and-56-second-long reading from Obama’s book during which he admitted to using marijuana and cocaine as a young man in addition to describing various experiences while using them.
Soon after that ended, O’Donnell moved on to what Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio has said when asked the question, but not without one final, heartfelt piece of praise for Obama and his book: “No one running for president on the Democrat or Republican side this time has ever, or will ever, write or say anything that honest.”
As the Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell and Tim Graham chronicled in their 2013 book Collusion, the liberal journalists in the media have repeatedly shown no interest in exposing or reporting on the President’s lies regarding his memoir.
In example after example, Bozell and Graham noted that “Obama was honored for his narrative-mangling skill” as the media “blithely accepted Obama's concocted life story without challenging the factual reliability of any of it.”
Portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on February 3 can be found below.
MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
February 3, 2015
10:46 p.m. Eastern
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Now, the most honest answer ever given to the drug use question came from Barack Obama, and he gave it long before anyone ever asked him the question. Long before we ever saw Barack Obama give a speech. Long before he was running for president. He had written the answer in a book called Dreams From My Father. It stands today as the finest literary work ever authored by a President of the United States. The book doesn't contain the whole truth of Barack Obama's life. Books can't do that, but it is, by far, the most honest and open book and artful book ever written by a president.
(.....)
10:49 p.m. Eastern
O’DONNELL: No one running for president on the Democrat or Republican side this time has ever, or will ever, write or say anything that honest.
