“The Last Word” host Lawrence O’Donnell predicted Thursday that 2023 will either be the first time that a former U.S. president is charged with a crime or the year when Donald Trump “finally gets all of his criminal legal problems behind him.”
But he also intimated that Trump’s legal woes isn’t all bad news for the Republican Party. In fact, criminal charges “might actually help House Republicans,” the MSNBC host said.
“If Donald Trump is charged with a crime, it might actually help House Republicans because it would take away attention from the way they are humiliating themselves in their own hearings just about every day now,” O’Donnell said.
He noted, for instance, that the GOP did not present a budget for the federal government on Thursday because “they don’t have one.”
“Instead, they held clownish hearings in which the Republican members of the committees and their witnesses were humiliated repeatedly by the truth,” he said.
O’Donnell proceeded to play clips of several House hearings, noting that “hypocrisy” was in all of them.
One focused on investigating what was happening at Twitter before Elon Musk bought it for $44 billion in October, in which Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz grilled Matt Taibbi for profiting off his “Twitter Files” by using cherry-picked information fed to him by the social media giant’s new owner.
Another was about enforcing subpoenas served on the Biden administration, in which Democrat Eric Swalwell ripped Republican Jim Jordan for calling the hearing despite being “absolutely out of compliance in the last Congress” by ignoring a subpoena related to the events of Jan. 6.
In the final clip, Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ripped her Republican colleagues for calling a hearing focused on why the federal government is “woke.”
“There’s no definition of what woke is but what is being criticized in this hearing is that the so-called woke policies are remote work for federal workers, especially those that live in rural areas and those who have disabilities. Paying interns so that critical opportunities don’t just go to privileged kids who’s parents can afford to pay for their rent while they go on a free internship,” she said. “That is what is woke here. That is what the other side is calling woke here.”
Watch O’Donnell’s full “The Last Word” segment in the video above.
