Lawrence O'Donnell backtracks on Trump finance story
MSNBC retracts thinly-sourced story on President Trump's finances; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'
President Trump on Thursday blasted Lawrence O’Donnell and the media at large after the MSNBC host was forced to retract an unverified report he shared on his show this week that tied Trump’s finances to Russia.
Calling the report "totally false," the president demanded that the media as a whole apologize for “inaccurate reporting.”
WHITE HOUSE SLAMS MSNBC FOR UNVERIFIED REPORT, SAYS LEFT-WING OUTLETS HAVE 'WEAPONIZED' THE MEDIA
“Crazy Lawrence O’Donnell, who has been calling me wrong from even before I announced my run for the Presidency, even being previously forced by NBC to apologize, which he did while crying, for things he said about me & The Apprentice, was again forced to apologize, this time ... for the most ridiculous claim of all, that Russia, Russia, Russia, or Russian oligarchs, co-signed loan documents for me, a guarantee,” Trump tweeted.
“Totally false, as is virtually everything else he, and much of the rest of the LameStream Media, has said about me for years. ALL APOLOGIZE!” he continued.
Minutes later, he added: “The totally inaccurate reporting by Lawrence O’Donnell, for which he has been forced by NBC to apologize, is NO DIFFERENT than the horrible, corrupt and fraudulent Fake News that I (and many millions of GREAT supporters) have had to put up with for years. So bad for the USA!”
The president’s tweets come after O’Donnell and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow discussed Tuesday night how Trump was “able to obtain loans when no one else would loan him any money.”
O’Donnell then hinted that he “may have some information” that would “add understanding to that, if true.”
“I stress ‘if true,’ because this is a single source who has told me that Deutsche Bank obtained tax returns…this single source close to Deutsche Bank has told me that Donald Trump’s loan documents there show he has co-signers. That’s how he was able to obtain those loans and that the co-signers are Russian oligarchs.”
Maddow, stunned, replied: “What? Really?”
MSNBC'S LAWRENCE O'DONNELL APOLOGIZES FOR UNVERIFIED RUSSIA REPORT: 'WE ARE RETRACTING THE STORY'
O’Donnell added “that would explain every kind word Donald Trump has ever said about Russia and Vladimir Putin if his information is accurate.”
On Wednesday morning the White House blasted the report, and later in the day Trump’s legal team penned a letter to NBCUniversal demanding a retraction and an apology for the “aforementioned false and defamatory” reporting and threatened to take legal action.
“This is one of the reasons that a majority of Americans have lost trust in the media. Instead of applying ethics and standards to their reporting, journalists and left-wing outlets have weaponized the media, using it to attack and harass people with little to no regard for the truth,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told Fox News.
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Later, O’Donnell kicked off his Wednesday night show by apologizing for running the unverified report, after earlier in the day walking it back and referring to it as an “error in judgment.”
"Last night on this show, I discussed information that wasn't ready for reporting," O'Donnell said.
“I did not go through the rigorous verification and standards process here at MSNBC before repeating what I heard from my source,” he continued. “Had it gone through that process, I would not have been permitted to report it. I should not have said it on-air or post it on Twitter. I was wrong to do so.”
Fox News’ Brian Flood and Joseph Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
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