Lawrence: Trump’s perverse jealousy of JFK is driving his destruction of the Kennedy Center

The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell

The episode examines recent controversial actions by Donald Trump, including the banning of specific news organizations from White House access

Key takeaways

• MSNOW, CNN, and Politico have filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump and Susan Wiles regarding the ban of news organizations from White House grounds.
• Senator Mark Kelly criticized Trump's plan to use the Triumphal Arch for drone storage and sniper positions as 'ridiculous.'

Main topics

• White House press ban lawsuit
• Triumphal Arch military complex proposal

Notable quotes

The strongest witness against Donald Trump in the case is Donald Trump.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a critical analysis of how personal political mo

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) Join MSNOW Live in Texas for our biggest event yet with Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki, Michael Steele and more. MSNOW Live Together in Texas this Saturday. Last chance to get tickets at ms.now.com. Well, Speaker 1 (0:15) I hope it wasn't something I said about Natalie Harp's hero. The Wall Street Journal reports, the president has objected in public and private to media coverage of his presidency for months, but his frustrations reached a fever pitch on Friday when one of his closest aides, Natalie Harp, showed him clips of anchors on the cable network MS Now criticizing his administration, according to people familiar with the matter. Hours later, Trump banned the network and two other news organizations from the White House. And now, the first woman White House Chief of Staff in history who actually is not Natalie Harp. is now a defendant, along with Donald Trump, in a lawsuit that Donald Trump is publicly expecting to lose already. MSNOW, CNN, and Politico joined in a lawsuit filed this morning against Donald Trump, Susan Wiles, as the White House Chief of Staff, along with the Director of the Secret Service, also as a defendant, and an official in the White House Communications Office as a defendant. all for banning those news organizations from covering the Trump White House from inside the fence among the White House press corps. The president does not have to allow any reporters into the White House ever. But once the White House established press access to the White House as a norm for Washington, the Washington Press Corps, it became an obvious constitutional violation of the First Amendment to try to ban any news organization because of what may have been said about the president. And so the judge assigned the case this morning has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday afternoon. And if the judge follows his previous practice, Donald Trump will lose as early as Wednesday afternoon. Donald Trump predicted his loss in a social media post this afternoon, saying they have drawn a great judge for them, a man who ruled in favor of Jim Acosta. The judge's name is Tim Kelly, and he was sadly appointed by Trump. Speaker 1 (2:28) When Donald Trump banned then-CNN reporter Jim Acosta from the White House in 2018, Judge Kelly ordered the reinstatement of Jim Acosta's press pass two days after the first hearing in the case, which was the day after the case was filed. And so, as usual, the strongest witness against Donald Trump in the case is Donald Trump. The lawsuit against Donald Trump by the three news organizations quotes defendant Trump saying on Friday afternoon that his order is a, quote, ban on the free press. Those were Donald Trump's own words, incriminating words, and explaining his social media post in a discussion with reporters in the Oval Office. Those were Donald Trump's own words, the worst words he could possibly have said. Now that those words appear on page one of a 27-page lawsuit, Donald Trump this morning said on social media, the White House is not instituting an assault on the free press. And then, I guess just to prove that he was lying, he added, something which I cherish, meaning he cherishes the free press. Speaker 1 (3:51) If defendant Trump becomes witness Trump in his lawsuit, he will probably be asked under oath if he or Natalie Harp wrote the social media post on Friday that started all this. The one that says, I am proud to announce that effective immediately I am banning fake news CNN MSNOW who recently changed their name from MSNBC due to lack of viewership and credibility exclamation point and Politico. White House sources did everything they could to blame Natalie Harp, and they're leaking to the media. People familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal that Natalie Harp showed him clips of anchors on the cable network MSNOW criticizing his administration. We know now, thanks to White House leaks, that Natalie Harp found the racist imagery of President Obama and Michelle Obama that Donald Trump posted on social media. How much of what Donald Trump posts on social media is actually posted by Natalie Harp? We don't know. But we might find out if Donald Trump decides to keep fighting this case in court. In New York this week, for a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, Donald Trump, after meeting with the mayor of New York, offered an explanation for his ban on the free press, an explanation that will not help him in court. MSNOW's Laura Barron-Lopez got the last question when the mayor and Donald Trump met with reporters. Speaker 4 (5:29) Mayor, to you first, what's your response to President Trump banning outlets from the White House grounds? Did you challenge him at all about this in your meeting with him? Historians and legal scholars have called it textbook authoritarianism. And, Mr. President, are you banning outlets like MSNOW, CNN, and Politico in order to distract from the Iran war and high gas prices? Speaker 5 (5:54) You know, I told the president that we're going to have all of the members of the press here on the lawn. And that is something that I believe Speaker 8 (6:02) in is is everyone, no matter the opinion or the critique that we engage. And it's interesting because they said they were going to boycott me, but they never boycott me. So I wasn't very worried about that. Look at all that press. But no, I'm not. I'm only doing it because I think the press also has an obligation. And, you know, I won in a landslide. I won the election in a landslide. I've done great Speaker 1 (6:27) things. I've done a lot of great things. OK, so Donald Trump's explanation for his ban on the free press today is I won in a landslide and I've done a lot of great things. Speaker 1 (6:40) On the day that Donald Trump announced his ban on the free press, there was an uprising against Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., with thousands of people spontaneously surrounding the Kennedy Center to prevent Donald Trump from demolishing it after Donald Trump was caught in this photograph examining what appears to be projected demolition of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Donald Trump hates a lot of people in this world. He hates huge populations of millions of people. He hates individuals very intently. He started publicly expressing his personal hatred of me 15 years ago when I called him a liar on this program the first time he opened his mouth about President Obama's birth certificate. He has publicly expressed his hatred of individual members of the press. Many times since then, individual members of Congress, actors, singers, football players, anyone. Donald Trump is extremely generous with his explicit, specific expressions of hatred against named individuals. But it may be that his most extreme individual hatred, the one that consumes him the most now, is for someone who is no longer with us, someone who fills Donald Trump with the most painful feeling he can ever experience, jealousy. The feeling of jealousy fills a narcissist like Donald Trump with the feeling. of horrible inadequacy, the feeling that someone is better than he is at something, someone is smarter than he is, wiser than he is, more thoughtful, more articulate, and even for a mind as base as Donald Trump's, more attractive. Imagine what it's like for Donald Trump to regard a man better educated than he is, more thoughtful, more articulate, more clever, more charming, more intelligent, and better looking. who did exactly the same job that Donald Trump is doing now. Donald Trump saw the United States presidency pass from colorless men like Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to the first glamorous man to occupy the presidency in the television age, which made the president by far the biggest star in the world, bigger than any movie star. That president was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. a Harvard graduate who had won the Pulitzer Prize as an author before winning the presidency. Jack Kennedy won the presidency with a winning margin of less than 1 % of the vote. And so it's safe to assume that half the country were not exactly Kennedy fans during his presidency. But the most fervent supporters of JFK were like the most fervent supporters of the greatest musical stars of that era, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, The Beatles. There was swooning for JFK. There was hysteria. There was fan hysteria for JFK among so many of his followers. And then on November 22nd, 1963, when an assassin ended his presidency, mourning for the assassinated president transcended party. Donald Trump in New York City that day would have seen the crying. He would have seen people coming home from work crying, men carrying their tools crying. He would have seen New York City police officers in uniform crying. Donald Trump knows the emotional spell JFK cast on the nation in death. He saw the public schools being renamed after President Kennedy. He saw New York's biggest airport being renamed after JFK. He saw streets all over the country change their names in memory of President Kennedy. He saw JFK's profile on the Kennedy half dollar minted in 1964. Donald Trump carried those coins in his pocket. And that, that coin is