MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell said Wednesday that President Donald Trump wants the news to focus on Jimmy Kimmel’s ousting at ABC. With no intention of making that wish “come true,” he covered the president’s past ties to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein instead.
“Donald Trump wants us to spend this hour talking about Jimmy Kimmel,” the “Last Word” host said during his monologue. “That’s what he wants, and he has had that wish come true on most cable news tonight. He won’t have that wish come true here.”
O’Donnell continued, “We are going to continue to cover what Donald Trump doesn’t want us to cover. Donald Trump wants an hour of talk about Jimmy Kimmel because he wants to show off his power to do what he did to Jimmy Kimmel. That is what he wants.”
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was suspended on Wednesday by ABC after Kimmel criticized the right-wing response to last week’s fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. An ABC spokesperson told HuffPost the show “will be pre-empted indefinitely.”
O’Donnell covered the story on Wednesday, but spent most of his show on another matter: what he called Trump’s “political and moral problem of the year.”
“In London last night, Donald Trump was greeted with pictures and videos of himself and Jeffrey Epstein and the fond birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein with what appears to be Donald Trump’s signature all projected onto Windsor Castle,” he said.
The president was welcomed by King Charles III on Tuesday for his second state visit to the U.K. O’Donnell noted the absence of Prince Andrew, who was stripped of his honorific titles after the late Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre accused him of raping her when she was a minor.
“Andrew is not welcome at that table now, where Donald Trump is welcome,” O’Donnell said. “And Jeffrey Epstein never said that he was Andrew’s closest friend, but … did say in a taped interview with Michael Wolff, ‘I was Donald’s closest friend for 10 years.’”
“And so, the king of England has stupidly managed to invite his family’s piece of the Epstein scandal right into his castle tonight,” he added. “If Andrew was too close to Jeffrey Epstein to not be allowed close to the king, how can Donald Trump be sitting at that table?”
Trump has tried to distance himself from Epstein, who died while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019. His death and ties to powerful people have fueled theories that O’Donnell has previously said Trump is desperate to distract from.
The MSNBC host did, of course, also delve into Kimmel’s suspension from ABC.
The move comes after Nexstar Media Group said it would stop airing Kimmel’s show over concerns about his comments. Nexstar is currently pursuing a major merger with media company Tegna and seeking approval from Trump’s Federal Communications Commission.
The “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was notably canceled earlier this year by CBS amid similar plans of a merger. The corporate union between its parent company, Paramount Global, and Skydance Media, was approved by the Trump administration in July.
Both hosts had spoken their minds about current issues in the days before their ousting.
“Richard Nixon never tried this,” O’Donnell said Wednesday of Trump’s influence in silencing his prominent critics. “Richard Nixon, the most corrupt American president prior to Donald Trump, never tried to get Johnny Carson fired from ‘The Tonight Show’ for telling jokes about Richard Nixon.”