ILLNESS: O'Donnell got lost in "the fog of the chase!"

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2025

So did quite a few others: As we've noted in recent weeks, Lawrence O'Donnell has been the must-see cable news anchor of the past month or so.

Other hosts at MSNBC have basically gone through the mandated topics, performing critiques by rote. O'Donnell has seemed to take President Trump's deteriorating conduct much more personally in these recent weeks. 

You wouldn't normally recommend that approach. In our view, the approach has worked quite well for O'Donnell of late.

Beyond that, O'Donnell has now started his annual promotional drive for his "Kid in Need of Desks" (KIND) project. The brilliant project arranges for school kids in the African nation of Malawi to have the chance, for the first time in their lives, to sit at a desk, not on the ground, as they pursue their dreams for the future in their nation's schools.

We regard Kid in Need of Desks as the most signicant use of time any cable news host has ever accomplished. The videotapes of O'Donnell's interactions with the deeply grateful young people of Malawi is a constant lesson in the astounding potential greatness of the human spirit.

That said:

LOD has long had a bit of an anger problem. Dating at least to 2004, it got him suspended from his posts at NBC cable at several times down through the years.

He also has an extreme relationship to the concept of "lying." For O'Donnell, every misstatement is a lie. We've never seen a person that smart who had so much trouble with that pair of basic concepts.

Last night, O'Donnell went off about the investigation of the events of September 2. His presentation started with this declaration, then went downhill from there:

O'DONNELL (12/4/25): First, they lie.

That's what has happened in the American military after every war crime committed by the American military.

First, they lie. Somewhere in the chain of command, they lie.

That is what Donald Trump's incompetent Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, did when first confronted with the Washington Post's breaking news report of a second missile strike on a small boat that had already been destroyed, and burst into flames, after the first missile strike.

The Washington Post reported that the second missile strike killed two people clinging to the wreckage, which would be a war crime in a war, and is murder outside of war. 

There is no war in the Caribbean. There is no "fog of war" there. So Pete Hegseth lied and said that everything in the Washington Post article was "the fake news delivering more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting."  

That was Pete Hegseth's first lie about this story, as soon as it came out.

That's the way O'Donnell started. Sadly, we have to say no.

Sadly, no! Simply put, Hegseth didn't lie and say that everything in the Washington Post article was "the fake news delivering more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting."   

Simply put, that didn't happen. Whatever you may think of Hegseth, he simply didn't say that.

Also, Hegseth's later remark about "the fog of war" was perfectly easy to parse, and it seems that what he said on that occasion is now being corroborated. 

It's possible that Hegseth committed a war crime on September 2 (or possibly not), though there will never be a consensus. But he actually didn't say what O'Donnell says he said. 

Lost in the fog of the chase, O'Donnell was grossly misdescribing what his target said about "the fog of war." A boatload of prejudgment was floating about as O'Donnell made that presentation—and as he continued, he made a series of inexcusable misstatements concerning the current investigation of this high-profile event.

In fairness, O'Donnell wasn't the only Blue American politician or journalist engaged in what we've described as "the fog of the chase." In this instance, the chase has been directed at the highly erratic Hegseth, and it's been quite widespread. 

For the record, we've seen this sort of group stampede being conducted before. As O'Donnell pursued the chase of Hegseth, he engaged in flagrant embellishment of elementary facts, but also in the practice we'd describe as "creative paraphrase." 

In truth, we humans aren't built for this line of work. We aren't built for the task of providing respectable journalism at a time of tribal war.

The explanation is this:

We humans all have a lizard brain. As everyone actually knows, that lizard brain is a basic part of our basic human wiring.

At times of tribal war, our lizard brains instruct us to believe the statements which support our tribal preconceptions. As individuals, our ability to function as the ballyhooed "rational animal" is determined by the extent to which we remain in thrall to our lizard brain.

Did Pete Hegseth commit a war crime in connection with the events of September 2? As far as we know, it's entirely possible that he did, though there will never be anything like a unanimous judgment across tribal lines on that point.

That said:

Did Hegseth lie and say that everything in the Washington Post article was "the fake news delivering more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting?" 

Was that his first lie about this story, as soon as it came out?

(For the source which Lawrence flashed on the screen, you can just click here.)

In fact, Hegseth made no such statement about that initial report. But as O'Donnell's angry presentation wound on, he lost himself in the fog of the chase, especially with respect to Hegseth's later reference to "the fog of war."

O'Donnell opened with one wild misstatement, then made several others. In one instance, he played tape of Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), appearing on last night's All In.

At least as O'Donnell framed his presentation, Rep. Smith seemed to have no idea what Hegseth was talking about when he spoke of "the fog of war." Creatures like us aren't built for this kind of work. We've proven that point many times.

Three nights have now passed since President Trump launched his two-day poisonous attack on the human "garbage" he says he's spotted in Minnesota. O'Donnell hasn't said a word about that "shocking" conduct as these nights have flown by.

This morning, the Morning Joe gang also took a third straight pass on that poisonous conduct. They piddled their way through some dog-eared topics, ran in fear from that. 

Joe Scarborough embarrassed himself the past two days as he engaged in the fog of the chase. This morning, he was nowhere to be seen. 

With Scarborough's bluster and embellishments gone, Mika Brzezinski actually staged a calmer, smarter presentation about the events of September 2. But for the third straight day, there was no mention—none at all!—of the poisonous attacks the president launched, two days in a row, about all the Somali "garbage" in the aforementioned state.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. That said, our Blue elites don't know how to talk about the type of "illness" with which the president is quite possibly afflicted.

As for us in the rank and file, we weren't up to the task of pushing back when chases of the current type were being directed at our own tribal leaders.

Al Gore said he invented the Internet? We sucked our thumbs for two solid years as these millionaire corporate toys conducted that form of the chase.

Rep. Omar has written a guest essay in today's New York Times. As our stars have conducted their chase after Hegseth, they've taken an astonishing pass on two days of undisguised poison.

This afternoon, we'll discuss Rep. Omar's essay. But let the word go forth to the nations—we Blues aren't up to the challenge of making accurate statements at a time of tribal war. Hegseth may have committed a crime—but no, he didn't say that.

Kids in Need of Desks is a brilliant use of cable news time. Malawi's kids are clearly deeply grateful to Lawrence. We Blues should be thanking him too.

This afternoon: Rep. Omar speaks

Also this: Go ahead and take a look. This is superlative work.