Lawrence O’Donnell laid into King Charles III after the latter announced he was stripping the royal titles from his younger brother, Prince Andrew — who is now known just as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.
The MSNBC anchor scoffed at the so-called punishment during Thursday night’s broadcast, where he ripped into the British monarch for only “symbolically” distancing himself from his “deeply [Jeffrey] Epstein involved brother.”
“The truth is a name change is not punishment,” the newsman said. “If you offered Jeffrey Epstein the option of being arrested and sent to prison as a child rapist, or having to change his name, which do you think he would have chosen?”
He added: “And so, now the big punishment for Andrew is that no one in Britain will call him the ‘Duke of York’ or ‘His Royal Highness,’ which no sane person anywhere ever should have called him.”
As O’Donnell went on, he accused King Charles of trying to have it “both ways,” given his announcement for stripping Andrew’s titles highlighted the former Duke’s denial of raping Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre when she was 17 years old. The monarch’s rep also noted the royal’s “thoughts and utmost sympathies” were with all victims and survivors of abuse.
“Okay. Then, give them the houses on your country estates,” O’Donnell noted. “You just gave your accused rapist little brother another country house on your family’s estates to live in for free for the rest of his life.”
O’Donnell later called out the British monarchy’s “ugly history,” suggesting the Crown had more to be sorry for than just the rape allegations against Andrew.
“Do you mean any and all forms of abuse visited upon people around the world by the British Crown throughout its ugly history?” he asked. “Or do you just mean the survivors of any and all forms of abuse delivered directly to them by individual members of your family?”
Watch O’Donnell’s full commentary in the video above.
Representatives for Buckingham Palace did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
