MS NOW host Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday continued railing against President Donald Trump and his “nonsensical” proclamations on the Iran war, arguing he has also found yet another new way “to dishonor” the seven U.S. military service members who have died in it.
“When Donald Trump started his war, he called it a war,” O’Donnell said Monday.
The “Last Word” host continued, “He called it a war multiple times and that is what it is. Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense [Pete Hegseth] also called it a war when the war began, which he especially loved doing since he falsely calls himself the Secretary of War.”
Trump and Hegseth have indeed both referred to the ongoing conflict as a “war,” confidently speaking to reporters throughout last week about Operation Epic Fury and its lethal airstrikes, with Trump demanding “unconditional surrender” from Iran to end the war.
“But now that Donald Trump realizes that Americans don’t like war and maybe being reminded that he campaigned against war when he was running for president, Donald Trump is twisting the language to avoid the word ‘war,’” O’Donnell said Monday.
He went on to play a clip of Trump describing the war as “an excursion” earlier that day while speaking at a retreat for House Republicans at his golf club in Florida. Trump also notably bragged at the time that “not a lot of people” would have gone on this “excursion.”
O’Donnell went on to condemn the president’s callous rhetoric on the conflict, which came mere days after Trump wore a baseball cap with “USA” written on it during the dignified transfer Saturday of the first six U.S. soldiers who were killed in the so-called “excursion.”
“That’s his latest description of his war today, an excursion,” he said. “Donald Trump finds new ways to dishonor the war dead. A silly hat, and now an excursion. It’s one thing to die in a war whose objective the president cannot explain. Americans have done that before.”

O’Donnell added, “But to … call it an excursion, before the families have even had the funerals, to struggle to find language that demeans those soldiers’ sacrifice in service to his desperate political needs, is a uniquely Trumpian moment in the American presidency.”
The MS NOW host also tore into Trump for his demand of “unconditional surrender” Friday from Iran, noting that the last time the U.S. accepted such an act “it took an atomic bomb to get it” and that Trump quite rapidly changed his tone as soon as the stock market dipped.
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O’Donnell argued Trump is “the first American wartime president ruled by the stock market and the oil market,” noting that he told a CBS News reporter Monday, “I think the war is very complete” — and said so during trading hours “in the hope of preventing a collapse.”
Trump suggested over the weekend, meanwhile, that the U.S. has “already won!”
Politics: Lawrence O’Donnell Slams Trump For ‘Stupidest Thing’ Any President ‘Has Ever Said’
O’Donnell appeared to mourn America’s former standing in the world, noting that when President Franklin D. Roosevelt demanded unconditional surrender from the Axis Powers during World War II, “the world knew” that the U.S. leader “meant those words.”
“And now the world knows the words of the current president of the United States have no meaning at all,” he said. “Thirty-one hours after Donald Trump demanded unconditional surrender in another social media post, Donald Trump said, ‘We’ve already won!’”
O’Donnell noted, “Donald Trump doesn’t even pay attention to the words of Donald Trump.”
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