Lawrence O’Donnell destroys Donald Trump’s demented Phoenix rally speech in real time

| 12:05 am EDT August 23, 2017
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Thanks to the magic of differing time zones, Donald Trump was giving his speech at his Phoenix rally tonight just as Lawrence O’Donnell’s 10pm EST show was airing on MSNBC. This left O’Donnell with the tricky decision about how much or little of Trump’s speech to air. But the host came up with a novel solution: he aired portions of Trump’s rambling live, while fact checking and debunking him in real time.

Lawrence O’Donnell didn’t hesitate to come out swinging in the process. At one point, after Donald Trump re-read passages from his original prepared speech about Charlottesville, O’Donnell jumped in to point out that Trump was misquoting himself. At several other points O’Donnell flat out declared that Trump was “lying” as he was indeed telling various lies. When Trump claimed that there were very few protesters outside, O’Donnell put up a split screen showing that the protests were sizable:

After Lawrence O’Donnell had cut away from Trump’s speech for awhile, he ultimately decided to check back in with it. But he happened to catch Trump rambling about how he went to a better school and has a better apartment than someone else, and within less than ten seconds, O’Donnell cut right back away from it. And he wasn’t the only cable news host to ripped Trump a new one over his speech.

After Donald Trump’s speech, CNN host Don Lemon spent significant time pointing out one Trump lie after another, showing video footage proving Trump was lying, and explaining why these lies were lies. And for once, not a single CNN panel commentator even bothered trying to defend Trump’s unhinged mess. That said, we’re fairly certain that the recently fired Jeffrey Lord spent Trump’s speech tonight sitting at home and writing out defenses of him in crayon on his placemat.