now it is time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening. alex. i alerted you the other night that i was gonna do something i wasn't going to do which i haven't done for years, which is stan and. walk i did it successfully, to my surprise. tonight i feel i should warn you, because this is the kind of thing you're going to care about. you might notice that at some point when you are studying on the hptlc. for the first time in television history, and maybe in my adult life, i am working tonight without collar stays. and i don't just have any idea how this color is going to look by the time we get to 10:30. dan, our director, i just instructed him to stay as far away from the collar as possible. >> listen, i couldn't tell if you didn't tell me, but talk to be at ten, 30 10:40, and 45. i'm lucky because these the candidates that might have extra callers. >> better caller stays. not the ones you get from the dry cleaners. >> he says he is mental caller stays. okay. >> you're in good hands, lawrence. >> thank you. orange jesus is trying to knock me out of this job again. we now know, thanks to liz cheney's new book, which will be published next week, that republicans in the house of representatives refer to donald trump as orange jesus and follow his every command religiously, even when they know he is lying. we'll hear more about that directly from liz cheney next monday night when she does her first primetime interview with rachel maddow on the network that donald trump now says he wants to shut down. the man who republican members of congress called orange cheeses wants to shut down msnbc. last night at 11:13 pm, 13 minutes after presumably watching this show, donald trump posted an attack not just on me this time, which he has done many times in the past, but on this entire network. saying the government should come down hard on msnbc. and we know what donald trump means by come down hard. he means completely destroy, he means violently attack, attack the way he wanted trump supporters to come down hard on congress on january 6th. it is hard to think, within the american political context, of words more blasphemous than orange jesus. the republican congressman's use of that name for donald trump once again proves that republican politicians were just profit who are professing their christian faith is as empty as the rest of their political rhetoric. the death dictionary defines blasphemy as the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for god, the act of claiming the attributes of a deity, irreverence toward something considered sacred or in violent. according to christian theology, the name orange jesus meets all of those definitions of blasphemy. jesus christ has endured constant attack over the centuries since the crucifixion, but never in american history has an american politician slander the founder of christiane 80 the way republican members of the house of representatives to every time they privately call donald trump orange jesus. last night 11:13 pm, donald trump began his attack on this network this way. miss in b.c. as free government approved airwaves. i would call that a lie if i didn't think donald trump was too stupid to know that was a lie. donald trump was born years before television. before it came into american homes. and when it finally did arrive, in his living room in queens, new york, what he was watching, a black and white, and a tiny box, was a broadcast coming over the airwaves from this building as television did in those days, whenly three networ. then when donald trump was 40 years old, cable television arrived in his neighborhood in new york city, obviously no one explain to donald why they called it cable television, so to this day he does not know that cable television that has never been broadcast over free government approved airways, which is why cable television, unlike the old broadcast networks, has never been subject to fcc jurisdiction. the fcc doesn't have jurisdiction but does have jurisdiction over nbc abc cbs because they were founded as over the airwaves broadcasters and her struggle treated that way with the government, even though, when you watch those channels at home, they are arriving on your cable system through your cable. so the man who wants to control the government, and then wants the government to come down hard on msnbc, has no idea that the government has no jurisdiction over cable news networks in any way, or anything else on cable stevie, which is why you get to hear all that profanity on hbo. i, for one, have always found it difficult to take threats from the stupidest man in the world seriously. i didn't take it seriously when he began attacking me and be alone in the news media in 2011, when i and i alone in the news media called him a liar for every word he said about president obama's birth certificate at that time. and i did not just criticize donald trump. i criticize the people running the entertainment division of nbc at that time because at what was a low point in nbc's ratings, donald trump had a primetime show on nbc where he pretended to fire people, and what donald trump publicly lied about president obama's birth certificate, the ratings of donald trump's nbc show went up. >> how crazy do you have to be, how many lies do you have to tell about the president of united states, how much hate the you have to promote, the donald trump has promoted, to get yourself kicked off of primetime nbc? >> you know, lawrence, that's a question, i don't have the answer to. you're there in 30 rock, maybe you can find out faster than i can. >> i did not know this at the time, but donald trump was busy than trying to get me fired from this network using his influence with the nbc entertainment executives who passed the word to the president of msnbc who completely ignore donald trump's attempts to fire me and didn't even mention it to me until years later. i'm still here at 30 rock, even though, in june of 2015, when i attacked donald trump's lying presidential campaign, don trump tweeted this, i hear the derby political pundit lawrence o'donnell, one of the number people on television, is about to lose his show. no ratings? to add. the dopey part might be arguable bought it wasn't in the second highest rated show on this network behind rachel maddow and eight years later on the nights when rachael was on here to see the highest rated show on this network. donald trump was still trying to get me fired in 2015 because at that time i was still the only person in the news business calling his statement lies and calling him a liar. as i began doing in 2011 when he began lying about president obama's person if you get. some people something the new york times did not call ally until september of 2016, when donald trump was already the republican nominee. donald trump's tweeted threats and insults never bothered me for many reasons, including my suspicions at the time that they were good for my ratings, which is probably why donald trump eventually stopped attacking me and moved on to attacking much lower rated shows on cnn. i never took seriously what donald trump said he was gonna do as president. i knew there would be no wall built, at the southern border, i knew he would never know how to pass an infrastructure bill. i knew the taxes would be cut, and don't trump just had to sign legislation, but the concept of a trump presidency, which ironically did not think was going to happen, didn't scare me because i believed, wrongly that congress could and would completely contain the worst impulses of the most ignorant man in the history of the word president. i was so wrong about that, and congress's ability and choice to control donald trump. when i was getting used on trump threatening me, the whole country was getting stood on trump threatening people, as he continued to do throughout his presidency and as he does now. and tonight this country has reached the point where a former president of united states, the leading republican candidate for president, has publicly threatened to shut down a cable news network and that is not news. if any previous president or leading presidential candidate in either party ever made such a threat it would've been the lead story in every news organization in the country, every tv channel, every newspaper, and now it's not news. it wasn't mentioned on nbc nightly news tonight. it was not mentioned on abc or cbs. those three national newscasts still have, by far the biggest audience in television news. they deliver more news to more people in this country than any thing else on television including all of cable news channels combined. and tonight, the first day in history that they had the story about a former president and the leading candidate for the republican presidential nomination saying the government should come down hard on a cable news network, none of them mentioned that story. in fact, tonight, the 20 million people who tuned into those three news broadcast programs nationally, did not hear a single mention of donald trump. not one word about donald trump on the national news broadcast. this is the product of what brian class is now calling the banality of crazy. this is, he says, warping the way that americans think about politics in the trump in post trump era. trump scandals have become predictably banal. american journalists have become golden retrievers watching a tennis ball on tour every time they start to chase one ball, another one comes interview, prompting a new chase. eventually chasing tennis balls fixating on john fetterman's whitty instead stories about the relentless political violence. this approach may be ill-advised, but not dangerous. today it's dangerous. my breathlessly covering every minor gaffe by joe biden while ignoring unhinged indictments, incitement to violence by trump, most lawyers never see the sides of trump that should most worry them. this creates plausible deniability for voters, where they can say he doesn't seem too bad, both candidates are flawed, but i'm going with trump. the press has succumbed to the numbing effect of the banality of crazy. once reporting on every single trump tweet in early 2017 because it was unusual, but now ignoring even the most dangerous policy proposals by an authoritarian who is on the cusp of once again becoming the most powerful man in the world, precisely because it happens like clockwork, almost every day. here's how the clockwork works today. today, donald trump called nikki haley, quote, a very weak and very ineffective bird brain. that would've been a giant campaign coverage explosion if someone had said something like that about another candidate in the pre-trump era. it was not mentioned on tonight's most watched national news broadcast. also today don trump said something else that would be the lead story in presidential campaign coverage but was completely ignored, and that is that he wants to kill obamacare, elton john systems now provides insurance to 40 million people. the presidential candidate saying he wants to take away the health insurance system, delivering health insurance to 40 million people. that is a big deal in campaign coverage, or it was a big deal in the pre-trump era now. it's not news. according to the news media who is responsibility is to accurately present the presidential candidates to the voters so they can make informed choices. also today donald trump attacked the wife of the judge presiding over the civil fraud trial of donald trump and his children in manhattan. he is the first former president in history to attack a judge presiding over his trial. that just isn't news anymore. for most of the news media, daniel patrick monahan's phrase for this phenomenon was defining deviancy. donald trump has defied his own deviancy, down to the point where there are now no standards at all that donald trump can violate, that can produce shocked headlines or even basic news coverage. and so the news media prefers to concentrate its headlines in the area of politics where everyone still behaves the way they always dead which is to say the biden biden side of our politics because the news media as a group believes on some level it is their job to challenge the president, and most of them aim their challenges as a candidate who is easiest to challenge because the challenge against him is so conceptually simple. his age. joe biden is 36 months older than donald trump. those three years are enough for most of the news media to decide that, one and only one of the leading presidential candidates for president should drop out of the race. brian class describes the two candidates this way. one of them is a 77 year old racist massage in a spigot who has been found liable for rape, who incited a deadly violent insurrection aimed at overturning a democratic election, who is committed mass fraud for personal enrichment, who is facing 91 separate counts of felony criminal charges against him and who has overtly discussed his authoritarian strategies for governing if he returns to power. the other is 80 years old with mainstream democratic party views who sometimes miss speaks or trips. there may be other reasons to criticize joe biden, but the main one discussed in the press is his age. one of those two candidates faces relentless newspaper columns and tv pundit takes, arguing that he should drop out of the race. spoiler alert, it's somehow not the racist authoritarian sexual abuse fraudster facing 91 felony charges. it's not, if you are once again, it's not as if you are once again living through a failure by most of the news media to comprehend the rise, to comprehend rise to the challenges of covering donald trump is a presidential candidate. it is that you are continuing to live through the very same failure of the news media that began 12 years ago in 2011, when donald trump began lying about president obama's birth certificate. >> recently have spent a lot of time talking about president obama's birth certificate or lack thereof. you don't seem convinced that he has won. >> no i'm not convinced that he has won. i have had very smart people say donald, stay on the china issue, stay on the saudi arabia issue, stay on the india taking our jobs in the mexico which is nafta which is get off the person to get issue. >> why don't you? >> you know why? three weeks ago when i started, i thought he was probably born in this country, and now i really have a much bigger doubt than i did before. i know i have some real doubts. i have people that actually have been studying and they cannot believe what they are finding. >> you have people now searching, in hawaii? >> absolutely. they cannot believe what they're finding. >> that's when it started. the american news media's failure to rise to the challenge of donald trump started in 2011 and has never stopped. i alone at the time said then that he was lying about sending people to hawaii to investigate the birth certificate. trump was surely amazed that he was able to get away with that kind of lie at the time, but he quickly learned how weak tv news could be in the realtime fact checking, and he relies on that weakness to this day. the news media is going to fail again in covering the trump presidency. it's going to fail. do not fake you can depend on the news media to cover this campaign correctly. you are going to have to do that work yourself. you're going to have to save democracy if it's going to be saved, yourself. it's going to be up to you. expecting the news media to help you in this is like expecting the news media to help you in your new years resolution to get in shape sometime after new year's eve. they cannot do it. they don't know how. they won't. and this time the stakes are even higher than last time. joining us now is staff writer for the new yorker and dean of the columbia university school of journalism. he's an msnbc political contributor. it's wide open to you to respond to any of that in any way you choose. >> i think that one of the crucial things that when we look at the history of journalism in this country and more specifically the ethics associated with journalism in this country is that we have generally refined who we are and refined our best practices in the face of crisis that happened after world war i, that happened after world war ii, and it certainly happened in the mccarthy area and ways that reminiscent of what is happening now. the myth of civil rights all the way through the iraq war. we have come to understand who we are and what we are supposed to do as journalists in dialogue with things going really very wrong in the country. the problem here has been the learning curve since the 2016 election. the learning curve in most parts of the country look like a flat line. we haven't assimilated the lessons we showed from the mistakes we made in covering donald trump in 2015, mistakes we made in 2016, the fact that we've had almost unfailing predictability gone for the kinds of distractions that he dangles out as opposed to looking at the more substantive issues. so if you have a presidential candidate who is threatening to eliminate a news organization, the response to that should be reporting on what happens in places where political candidates are allowed to eliminate news organizations. the short answer is that those are autocracies. we have to actually approach that and not be afraid of being called partisan. for that matter, there's an easy way out of the kind of partisanship issue, which is that many of the things that people criticize donald trump for now is a republican leading candidate or problems with donald trump years ago when he was a democrat. so irrespective of which party he belonged to there was a through line in his thinking on these matters. when you raised the mccarthy era, i don't know that in detail but there was a slow media response to this, to mccarthy's lying about people and slandering people. a very slow political response to president eisenhower was afraid of, thought mccarthy was crazy, was afraid of saying a word about it. so what does that timeline tell us about where we are now? >> there was a kind of incentive. people knew mccarthy was good copy, especially in print media. if you put mccarthy on a headline people get a pick up that newspaper, so there's a profit incentive that conflicted with the actual ethical obligations. and so overtime i think the media became aware of just how corrosive and dangerous mccarthy wise. and mccarthy knew something that donald trump has utilized time and time again, which is that he could lie exponentially and the news organizations could only fact-check arithmetic lay. so he is telling to lies and then for lies and then eight lies, and we're still tracking down the first lie that he told. and so that kind of multiplicity of prevarication, if you want to call it that, we have seen is one of the tactics in donald trump's political playbook. we still haven't caught up to it in many instances. we think about how you interview. in 2011, 2012, actually the timeframe when that first meredith vieira interview happened, you can say was irresponsible then. it was very much easier to see now the level of irresponsibility implicit in that. in 2020, three 2024, it's inexcusable. >> we will see how fast a learning curve can move this year. >> oh this is a great i can get through this tonight. college days from jelani cobb. thank you for the collar stays. a criminal lawyer warned trump it's going to be a crime. those were her words. it's going to be a crime. and he did it anyway. that's next, with andrew weissmann. next, with andrew weissmann. weissmann. >> i was a bit nervous at first but then i figured it's just walking, right? [dog barks] oh. no it's just a bunny! calm down taco. sit duchess. stop! sesame no no. archie! walter don