Lawrence O’Donnell took aim at Donald Trump Thursday, criticizing the president for posting what he described as AI-generated propaganda-style war videos that he said trivialize real military service while portraying a conflict with Iran as entertainment.
“Donald Trump is pumping out videos not smart enough to be called childish, that are aimed at his voters to inspire their support of his war,” O’Donnell said MS NOW’s “The Last Word.”
He took aim at the recent videos Trump has uploaded to the White House’s official social media accounts, including one that compared war to American football.
“Here is a right-wing Republican government very specifically claiming that war is football, or football is war. Or if you love football, you should love war,” O’Donnell explained. “Think of how stupid you have to be to watch that video and think it’s cool. You have to be stupid enough to work in the Trump White House to think that. You have to be Donald Trump to think that.”
O’Donnell suggested that Trump must think that his voters are “stupid,” and it’s led him to continue to make more and more controversial posts about the war.
“He keeps coming up with these videos, he keeps them coming,” O’Donnell said as he laid into one of Trump’s videos that used Hollywood TV shows and films like AMC’s “Breaking Bad.”
“Donald Trump’s White House put out a video early in his war filled with imagery created in Hollywood by opponents of Donald Trump who object to being used in Donald Trump’s war propaganda videos,” O’Donnell said, mentioning that Trump seemingly wants to be seen as a deranged drug lord. “And those images include the glorification of TV’s most famous fictional drug dealer. Vince Gilligan, the brilliant creator of ‘Breaking Bad’ never intended to glorify the high school teacher turned meth dealer, played brilliantly by the Emmy-winning actor Bryan Cranston. But Donald Trump wants you to admire that character and think of him that way.”
At one point during the segment, as production played one of the videos, O’Donnell literally shook his head in disgust watching.
“Donald Trump wants you to think that he is as cool as, and as scary as, a meth dealer in waging his war,” O’Donnell said. “Only the sickest minds could possibly come up with that. Imagine how stupid you have to be to depict your war that way. Imagine how stupid you have to be to work in the White House that is producing that video and dishonoring real military service in the process while Donald voted to the safety of the American military that he put in harm’s way.”
You can watch the full “The Last Word” segment in the video above.
