There's another book about former President Donald Trump coming out, this one by Michael C. Bender of The Wall Street Journal claiming that Trump told Chief of Staff John Kelly "well, Hitler did a lot of good things." MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell ran with that, over Twitter and during his Wednesday monologue on "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell."
The subject of his monologue was "Trump's cruelty," though he began by claiming he was "not [going] to compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler."
O'Donnell did acknowledge that Bender spoke to Trump, who denied he made the comments about Hitler to Kelly.
Part of the monologue honed in on David Duke, "America's Klansmen," and "Donald Trump's American Nazi supporters," described as "the people who come to his rallies, believing that Adolf Hitler did a lot of good things, but could have done more."
As O'Donnell repeatedly claimed throughout the monologue, whether one is part of the "Trump opponents" or "Donald Trump's Nazi followers," it is not surprising that Trump said such things.
"And that reason is that Donald Trump repeatedly has demonstrated and fully embraced cruelty, here and abroad," O'Donnell said.
Trump is so "cruel," according to O'Donnell, because of his attempts to repeal ObamaCare and his feud with John McCain over the late senator's vote against that repeal.
Then there's how O'Donnell categorizes the Georgia election integrity law:
Now, Donald Trump wants to take away voting rights from Americans. They want to make black Americans in Georgia stand in long voting lines without access to water, because that kind of cruelty is the point. That's what Donald Trump thinks. Some people deserve daring to vote and daring to vote against him.
That Georgia law is being challenged in court, after a lawsuit from Biden's Department of Justice, which Reagan has covered extensively, including how the RNC and NRSC are fighting back against this lawsuit. Further, the lawsuit has already hit a roadblock after a federal judge upheld provisions of the newly enacted law.
Further, Trump actually indicated in remarks he made at the NC GOP convention on June 5 that he didn't think the Georgia law went far enough. Not because of a matter of "cruelty," but because there are many more states far more restrictive than Georgia with their laws on voting.
Up until this point of the monologue, O'Donnell had focused on Trump supporters who were "Americans Nazi supporters" and "American klansmen."
That all changed though, when he denigrated Republicans who voted for Trump over legitimate policy issues:
When you find Republicans who are troubled by Donald Trump`s cruelty but still vote for him, they talk about the things they agree with Trump on, like tax cuts or Supreme Court justices. And then they invariably say something like, Trump did a lot of good things. Exactly what Donald Trump said about Adolf Hitler.
O'Donnell went on to welcome his first guest, Adam Serwer, who is a staff reporter for The Atlantic and the author of "The Cruelty is the Point," the title of his new book and a 2018 article. Serwer concurred with O'Donnell's emphasized remarks that people wouldn't be surprised to hear what Trump said about Hitler.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member