Lawrence O'Donnell gets over his skis!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019

For entertainment purposes only: Why does Donald Trump seem to love Vladimir Putin so much?

We can't answer your question. At this point, neither can Lawrence O'Donnell, though he did get way out over his skis pm Tuesday night's Last Word.

On Wednesday night, he had to retract what he'd said. Everybody makes mistakes, and this was the latest example.

The fact that Lawrence retracted his claims doesn't mean that his claims are false. It's still possible that Lawrence's claims are true. It's also possible that Lawrence stopped to rob a bank Tuesday night on his way home from work.

Last night, Lawrence got massacred by Boston's Howie Carr on Tucker Carlson Tonight. We were struck by how many segments Carlson did last night which had a substantial semblance of truth. It's a measure of how much ridiculous conduct continues to emerge from various players on our team, helping prop Donald Trump up.

If you're behind on the Lawrence affair, we'll direct you to Erik Wemple of the Washington Post. It's getting harder and harder to force ourselves to go through the motions with this constant bullshit from our own players Over Here within our own self-impressed tribe.

We were happy to see that Wemple mentioned John Heilemann. He was cheering Lawrence on as Lawrence ran with the thrilling report he later had to retract:

WEMPLE (8/29/19): John Heilemann, an MSNBC national affairs analyst, regurgitated the cautionary phrase of the moment and then proclaimed how big a story this could be: “Got to stress if true, but if true, the reporting that you have … it’s the skeleton key, right, that opens—picks the lock on so many fundamental mysteries of the Trump era.”

How big a story this could be, if the story was known to be true!

Our team would be much better off if we were better able to see how much foolishness emerges from our corporate hirelings and our tribal elites. For example, this column in Sunday's Outlook section was just depressingly underfed all the way down.

We've been trying to force ourselves to reread and discuss the column; we may discuss it this weekend. But the silly, unhelpful tribal pieties, how powerfully they burn!

For entertainment purposes only, here's part of Lawrence's most famous historical meltdown, from late in Campaign 04. At the time, the newly emerging on-line left thought his performance had been heroic.

In our view, his effort was lazy and self-defeating, but don't force us to explain that. For entertainment purposes only, that link provides just a tiny part of Lawrence's two-segment meltdown that night.

He got kicked off the air for the next several months. He'd been too lazy to compose and publish actual work about the topic at hand.

Everybody makes mistakes, and Lawrence gets to make his. As a tribe, we've been praying for a magical knockout of Trump for the past several years.