President Donald Trump, master of schadenfreude? That was what MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow suggested on Monday’s episode of The Last Word. O’Donnell, under the influence of a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, claimed that the indictments of his political opponents were all that Trump cared about.
“It comes down to - for Donald Trump, it comes down to, just get them indicted. That is the minimum that is good enough for him. He just wants to see them go through that pain,” O’Donnell proclaimed to Maddow during their hand off.
In their coverage, the two so-called journalists missed one crucial fact present in these cases - the DOJ can only indict someone if they have some evidence that the person committed a federal crime. Trump did not sit on any of the federal grand juries that passed the indictments, and he was not the one facing his political rivals in court. That was the job of federal prosecutors.
