Lawrence O’Donnell has dubbed Donald Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff as the president’s “clown of the day” for trusting Russia’s claims that they aren’t helping Iran in the war with Iran.
“Donald Trump and everyone working for him in Washington on his war continue to demonstrate every day that they are completely lost. And if they don’t know what they are talking about, that means they don’t know what they are doing,” O’Donnell said Tuesday during Tuesday’s “The Last Word” on MS NOW before kicking off his roast of Witkoff.
“Steve Witkoff obviously knew nothing about the Middle East or Vladimir Putin when Donald Trump chose him,” he continued. “He demonstrated so embarrassingly today when Carl Quintanilla at CNBC asked him why Donald Trump decided to allow Vladimir Putin to take full advantage of the explosive increase in the price of oil and profit off of that new price, a new price created by Donald Trump’s war.”
The demonstration O’Donnell was referring to was Witkoff telling Quintanilla that he can take Russia “at their word” that they are not sharing information with Iran — the country’s ally — related to U.S. military installations in the Middle East, which Iran has successfully been able to target and attack over the past weeks.
Watch the segment below:
“I’m not an intel officer, so I can’t tell you,” Witkoff said, following reports of Russia’s assistance and Trump’s reported phone call with Putin, during which he reportedly denied helping Iran. “I can tell you that yesterday on the call with the president, the Russians said that they have not been sharing. That’s what they said. So, we can take them at their word, but they did say that.”
O’Donnell alluded that Trump is running a circus, and Witkoff is one of the clowns.
“We can take them at their word. He said that,” O’Donnell said. “Donald Trump’s clown of the day, Steve Witkoff, says we can take Vladimir Putin’s word for it that Russia has not been helping Iran target attacks on American military personnel.”
He continued, saying that Putin is fully aware of how helping Iran negatively impacts the U.S., despite his reported relationship with Trump.
“That is the single worst thing Vladimir Putin could possibly be doing to the United States in this war. And Vladimir Putin knows it,” O’Donnell said. “And Vladimir Putin also knows that Donald Trump has always behaved like Vladimir Putin’s trained puppy around the Russian dictator. Vladimir Putin knows that he has lied to Donald Trump to his face, and Donald Trump has then gone out to a microphone to tell the world, ‘I believe Vladimir Putin.’”
He closed out his thoughts saying: “Donald Trump’s breathtakingly incompetent real estate developer buddy Steve Witkoff does appear to actually be stupid enough to believe Vladimir Putin and to say on television that he believes Vladimir Putin.”
Watch the clip above.
