Lawrence O’Donnell Dings Donald Trump for Lacking Sean Hannity’s ‘Moral Clarity’ on Vladimir Putin
In his opening monologue on Thursday night, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell offered a rare tribute to Sean Hannity – for having the “moral clarity” of Vladimir Putin that his good friend Hannity is what Donald Trump has been missing.
O’Donnell reference a March interview The Fox News host has done with Trump, in which the former president refuses to call Putin “evil” or even admit that he has committed “evil” acts. O’Donnell also cites a more recent discussion Hannity worked with actor and humanitarian Sean Penn, where the two agreed that “evil” was an accurate depiction of the Russian president.
O’Donnell said: “Donald Trump still can’t say something like that for himself. “Donald Trump doesn’t have the moral clarity of Sean Penn, or Sean Hannity, when it comes to Vladimir Putin.”
Trump again called into Hannity’s primetime Fox News program on Wednesday, and O’Donnell hone in on what Trump — again — didn’t say.
O’Donnell said: “Sean Hannity hasn’t given up on Trump’s dream of another presidency, and he still doesn’t seem to have given up on his dream of making Donald Trump see Vladimir Putin through a moral framework.
Although Trump has called Russia’s actions “genocide,” as have President Joe Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart, the former president took the opportunity to describe the Putin-initiated war in Ukraine as “the crime of our time”, as Hannity put it. it.
“Hannity could not have given Trump a stronger signal that he needed to answer this question in the right way than to point out to him that he asked him this exact question the last time. he’s on Sean Hannity’s show,” O’Donnell said after playing a clip from the interview Wednesday night.
However, O’Donnell continued, “Donald Trump said nothing. He said a few hundred words including NATO, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, NATO got rich, he said something really offensive about Chuck Todd – but he dared not say a single insult about Vladimir Putin. Not one.”
When Russia first attacked Ukraine, Trump praise the invasion is “genius” and “very knowledgeable.”
