Lawrence O’Donnell held up a copy of President Trump’s $15 billion libel lawsuit against the New York Times during Tuesday night’s edition of MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” calling the document “crazy” and an attempt to distract from FBI Director Kash Patel’s congressional oversight hearings this week.
“There is a new honor roll at the New York Times tonight with four names on it,” O’Donnell began. “Those four names appear in the defendant block of this crazy lawsuit filed by Donald Trump today, which takes its place now as the single most ridiculous lawsuit ever filed by the most ridiculous litigant in American political history, Donald Trump.”
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Florida, names the Times and reporters Peter Baker, Susanne Craig, Michael Schmidt and Russ Buettner among its defendants. Citing multiple articles published before the presidential election of 2024 was held, the lawsuit accuses the Times of publishing work “filled with repugnant distortions and fabrications about President Trump.” O’Donnell, for his part, was baffled by both the timing and the contents of the lawsuit.
“Donald Trump decided that today was the day to file a lawsuit suing the New York Times for — this is one of the things that this lawsuit is about — endorsing Kamala Harris in the presidential campaign last year. Donald Trump thinks you can sue for that!” the MSNBC anchor noted. “It took Donald Trump a year to decide to file this lawsuit today.”
O’Donnell, however, speculated that the latter comment may not be entirely accurate, asking, “Or did it?”
You can watch the full “Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” segment yourself in the video below.
O’Donnell observed that this is far from the first surprising lawsuit Trump has filed since he took office again in January.
“How many of these things, these stacks of paper, does the Trump lawsuit factory have ready to go on a day when Donald Trump thinks he really needs one of these?” the “Last Word” host asked, before remarking, “Today was one of those days.”
O’Donnell ultimately came up with a few reasons for why Trump might have decided to sue the New York Times this week of all weeks over articles published a year ago.
The first, he speculated, is that Trump knew FBI Director Kash Patel would be questioned about the government’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and Trump’s friendship with the deceased child sex trafficker. The second reason O’Donnell mentioned was the New York Times’ report this week about two multibillion-dollar deals that were struck earlier this year between the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates and a crypto company co-founded by Trump’s family.
“Donald Trump knew that the most incompetent FBI director in history, who is also incompetent at actually tying a necktie, would be testifying in [front of] the Senate Judiciary Committee and would be asked questions about Donald Trump’s old friend, Jeffrey Epstein,” O’Donnell explained.
“So Donald Trump knew he would want something to distract from that today,” the MSNBC anchor concluded. “Donald Trump [also] knew that the New York Times yesterday delivered another massive investigative report of Donald Trump’s finances, which Donald Trump desperately wants to distract from with the most ridiculous lawsuit he has ever filed.”
