Trump Humiliated in the ‘Most Powerless Image Ever’ of a U.S. President: O’Donnell
Trump has always craved the attention of the “truly rich,” and now he finally has it, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said.
Trump Humiliated in the ‘Most Powerless Image Ever’ of a U.S. President: O’Donnell
'PRESIDENTIAL SUBSERVIENCE'
Trump has always craved the attention of the “truly rich,” and now he finally has it, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said.
Janna Brancolini
Updated Feb. 12 2025 10:41AM EST Published Feb. 12 2025 4:32AM EST
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Elon Musk humiliated President Donald Trump during Tuesday’s joint press conference in the Oval Office, which left Trump looking like the “most powerless” U.S. president ever caught on camera, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said on The Last Word.
During a press conference in the Oval Office in which they claimed—without providing a single piece of evidence—to have uncovered billions of dollars of government waste and fraud, Musk spoke 3,666 words to Trump’s 2,487, O’Donnell said.
Musk brought his 4-year-old son X to the press conference, wore a T-shirt and baseball cap, and even interrupted Trump.
He stood over Trump while the president sat behind the Resolute Desk, “delivering a picture of presidential subservience the likes of which we have never seen—the most powerless image of a president of the United States ever created by a camera,” O’Donnell said.
“[Former Vice President] Mike Pence never had a day like that in the Oval Office with Donald Trump. [Vice President] JD Vance will never a day like that in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, because Donald Trump is the boss of JD Vance,” he said.
Elon Musk overshadowed Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Trump, he continued, has always craved the attention of the “truly rich, virtually all of whom ignored Donald Trump as phony rich and vulgar rich.”
Now he has the attention of the world’s richest man, who can literally bail him out of the $82.5 million he currently owes writer E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued Trump for defamation, and the $500 million judgment levied against him in a civil fraud case in New York.
“We have no idea how dependent Donald Trump is on Elon Musk. There will probably never be a way of knowing,” he said.
During Tuesday’s press conference the pair proved their “comfort with public lying,” he added, since they accused the government of billions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse without producing a single fraudulent contract or recipient of abusive spending.
“As soon as they can show us that waste, fraud and abuse and prove it, I will congratulate them,” he said. “But so far they have found absolutely nothing, because they have produced no evidence.”
