Lawrence O’Donnell slammed Donald Trump for telling oil tankers to have some “guts” and sail through the Strait of Hormuz, questioning if the president would tell his own 19-year-old son Barron Trump to do the same.
“Donald Trump wants the non-combatants on commercial vessels to do something that no one in the Trump clan has ever done: enter a war zone, show some guts,” O’Donnell said during his Monday segment of “The Last Word.”
“How about 19-year-old Barron Trump, who is turning 20 in 11 days?” O’Donnell continued, pointing out that the sons of former sitting presidents have walked the frontlines of war while their fathers took up the Oval Office.
“As I reported on this program last week, all four of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s sons served in the military in World War II while their father served as commander-in-chief until his death in office weeks before Germany’s unconditional surrender,” O’Donnell said. “It was unthinkable then for a president’s son.”
Watch the clip below.
O’Donnell called out Trump after the president urged oil tankers to travel through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping chokepoint that flows through the borders of Iran and Oman.
“These ships should go through the Strait of Hormuz and show some guts, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Trump reportedly old “Fox and Friends” personality Brian Kilmeade, seemingly dismissing dangers of the ongoing U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict, which he claimed is “pretty much” over. “They have no Navy, we sunk all their ships.”
However, Kilmeade also reportedly noted that Trump told him: “There is risk in the region, the region is volatile, their launchers, there’s just about 150 left, that’s just about 20 percent of totals, they can’t regenerate, they can’t make any more.”
According to The Hill, as a result of the war, oil has reached prices above $100 a barrel, which Trump claimed is a “very small price” for Americans to pay for “safety and peace.”
“‘Show some guts … 20% of the world’s oil shipments pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which has now become far too dangerous for safe passage,” O’Donnell said, noting the dangers tankers would face making the trip. “Shipping traffic has dropped by at least 90% in the Strait, or more, and Donald Trump’s solution to that is for everyone on those oil tankers to just be brave. You know, like him.”
He added that Trump’s remarks completely dismiss and minimize the feelings of the tankers and their loved ones as he urges them to proceed through the strait amid the conflict.
“Donald Trump wants the captains and crews of those ships to be brave and put themselves in the line of fire, put themselves in harm’s way,” O’Donnell said. “Just call their families at home around the world and tell them, wish me luck. We are bravely going through the strait today because Donald Trump told us to show some guts.”
Watch the full clip above.
