MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell says Trump’s indictment in Georgia is cutting much deeper than previous criminal cases – so much so that it’s shut down the former president’s sharp criticisms.
Trump was indicted a fourth time on Monday by a grand jury over Georgia’s 2020 election investigation. The indictment included 41 counts stemming from Georgia’s lengthy probe into alleged conspiratorial conduct committed by Trump and his team throughout the election cycle.
In addition to Trump, the indictment brings criminal charges against Trump world characters, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, lawyer Sidney Powell and more. The defendants have until Friday, Aug. 25 to voluntarily turn themselves in.
“See how terrified Donald Trump has to be,” said Lawrence O’Donnell on his Thursday night show. “For him to follow the advice of his lawyers. That’s how terrified Donald Trump is tonight.”
Trump’s criminal defense team is “not going to mount a defense that says Donald Trump’s lies were true,” continued the MSNBC host.
The former president “has been terrified into silence by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.”
O’Donnell mocked Trump’s relatively tame attacks against Willis saying his words were “as mild an insult as Donald Trump has ever delivered publicly to anyone.”
“This might mean Donald Trump is more in control of his lawyers tonight,” considered O’Donnell. “It might mean that Donald Trump has turned a corner rhetorically as a criminal defendant and that he will stop launching vicious false racist attacks.”
The MSNBC host claimed that Trump is weak right now, after an interview for the “ultra-low rated Fox Business Channel,” in which he seemed like a “defeated man with a fawning host who commands a regular TV audience about 1/10 the size of the audience,” regularly watching O’Donnell’s primetime MSNBC program.
O’Donnell thought Trump’s interview with Fox’s Larry Kudlow and his questioning regarding the former president’s impending legal troubles, “was as much of a softball as an indictment question could be,” and his “response is what was what Donald Trump would call low energy.”
His interview didn’t include much negative commentary about prosecutors and judges in the criminal cases against him, “who he has attacked viciously in the past.” O’Donnell said Trump was “ just a very weary version of his witch hunt bit.”
“Now we see Fani Willis’s indictment has landed on Donald Trump more heavily than any other indictment,” said O’Donnell. “Finally, Willis’s indictment is the indictment that made Donald Trump shut up.”
