MS NOW’s O’Donnell Claims U.S. Lost Cold War, Touts Trump-Russia Conspiracy

MS NOW via SnapStream On Tuesday, MS NOW’s The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell made the claim that “America lost the Cold War” due to President Trump’s recent diesel deal with Russia. O’Donnell launched into his hunch that Trump “now has surrendered” to Vladimir Putin. Also in on the guesswork was foreign affairs analyst and Daily Beast columnist, David Rothkopf, who argued that the president has since gone soft on Russia, reversing all the progress from the Cold War with Trump “doing his bidding” (Click “expand”):You know, think of our lives for the past 30 years. We reveled in the fact that we ended the Cold War, that we had triumphed, that our way of life had triumphed, that we were this force for good in the world. At least we aspired to be. But now the president is subordinate to the President of Russia. He is doing his bidding. We've seen him bend the knee before. But what he's done in the past few days in terms of this diesel deal, in terms of waiving these sanctions, in terms of cutting back intelligence flows to Ukraine, in terms of the deals that Senator Ossoff was talking about that are being negotiated now is just say, look, we are publicly on the side of Russia. We are publicly against our ally, Ukraine. We are supporting a war criminal that is killing women and innocent children as we speak. With the claim of Trump’s support of Putin who is “a war criminal that is killing women and innocent children,” Rothkopf didn’t stop short to suggest that Trump was a traitor who had purposefully provided taxpayer dollars to Iran who he knew would attack Americans:…[Trump] knows that he is providing U.S. taxpayer dollars that are going to end up one way or another, supporting Iran as they attack us, as they attack our soldiers, our sailors, their families, our bases. Now, you know, that gets us from the realm of betrayal to the realm of traitorous behavior. We've never seen this from a president. Then began O’Donnell’s rampage into how Trump’s push to purchase Russian oil to bring down the price of American diesel was in direct correlation with his desire to help Russia against Ukraine, and, in effect, Iran against the United States (Click “expand”): …this is a closed loop. You can start wherever you want, but if you start it with Donald Trump is helping Russia against Ukraine and you end up with Donald Trump is in effect, helping Iran against the United States by helping Russia. Any one of those pieces would be too much to believe prior to now. But a president of the United States actually delivering resources to a supplier of a country that would take every opportunity in this current war to try to kill American service members. This is so far beyond the wildest dreams of the authors of the Impeachment Clause of the Constitution. The two continued to bounce ridiculous claims off each other, first with Rothkopf’s proclamation on how Trump “...is a man who is working against us” in which “The President of the United States has become the principal enemy of the United States.” O’Donnell added fuel to his dwindling fire with comparison of Soviet Union and Cold War era presidents to Trump, in which “He certainly stands in history as the enemy of every previous president.” O’Donnell then imagined a Kremlin wish list involving weakened American alliances, changes at the Pentagon, and reduced troop commitments in Europe (Click “expand”): Think of the trillions we spent. Think of the tens of thousands of lives that were lost during the Cold War. Think of the efforts that we went to, to build alliances to strengthen Europe. He's dismantling those. He's attacking those. He's talking about pulling troops out of Europe. If Vladimir Putin had sat down at his desk in the Kremlin and said, here is a to-do list for dismantling the U.S. and the threat we see from the U.S. I'm going to put an incompetent in the head of the Pentagon. I'm going to decapitate the Pentagon and its leadership. I'm going to spend its money on frivolous things. I'm going to, you know, wage frivolous wars. I'm going to attack our allies. I'm going to undermine our alliances time after time after time. What he is doing helps Russia, and it devastates us. No anti-Trump Russia monologue would be complete without revisiting 2016. O’Donnell closed out the conversation by invoking Trump’s “Russia, if you’re listening” remark, suggesting Trump’s alleged gratitude for Russian election interference was connected to his current foreign policy. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:MS NOW’s The Last Word With Lawrence O’DonnellOctober 20, 202610:30:34 p.m. Eastern(...)LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: You know, your article hit me so hard with that very simple headline about winning the Cold War. Did we really win the Cold War? Have we now lost the Cold War? It is just a powerful and kind of irrefutable frame on what we're looking at here. We thought we won the Cold War, but Vladimir Putin kept fighting. And Donald Trump, it seems, now has surrendered.DAVID ROTHKOPF: I think it's true, Lawrence. You know, think of our lives for the past 30 years. We reveled in the fact that we ended the Cold War, that we had triumphed, that our way of life had triumphed, that we were this force for good in the world. At least we aspired to be. But now the president is subordinate to the President of Russia. He is doing his bidding. We've seen him bend the knee before. But what he's done in the past few days in terms of this diesel deal, in terms of waiving these sanctions, in terms of cutting back intelligence flows to Ukraine, in terms of the deals that Senator Ossoff was talking about that are being negotiated now is just say, look, we are publicly on the side of Russia. We are publicly against our ally, Ukraine. We are supporting a war criminal that is killing women and innocent children as we speak. And that's nauseating to people like you or I who have lived through all of this. It's almost unthinkable. But I was just watching your opening story and thinking of the horrors that befell the people at the Bahrain naval base. And Trump knows and has as much as admitted that Russia is providing aid to Iran. Missiles, intelligence. He said, well, they're not doing as much as they could, which is saying that they are doing something. And so essentially, he knows that he is providing U.S. taxpayer dollars that are going to end up one way or another, supporting Iran as they attack us, as they attack our soldiers, our sailors, their families, our bases. Now, you know, that gets us from the realm of betrayal to the realm of traitorous behavior. We've never seen this from a president. We've seldom, I think, since the Civil War, perhaps seen it from any senior official in the U.S. government.O’DONNELL: Yeah, we've never seen a fraction of it. And this is a closed loop. You can start wherever you want, but if you start it with Donald Trump is helping Russia against Ukraine and you end up with Donald Trump is, in effect, helping Iran against the United States by helping Russia. Any one of those pieces would be too much to believe prior to now. But a president of the United States actually delivering resources to a supplier of a country that would take every opportunity in this current war to try to kill American service members. This is so far beyond the wildest dreams of the authors of the Impeachment Clause of the Constitution.ROTHKOPF: I don't think anybody who wrote the Constitution or founded this country ever thought we could descend to the point where such betrayals from the president were possible. Think about the stories we've read today. President Trump talking to Elon Musk about turning off intelligence, turning off Starlink services to the Ukrainian military that we know protect civilians and that we have subsequently seen, when we turn it off, lead to the deaths of women and children. But then we think, oh yeah, Don Jr. had a wedding that was underwritten by a guy who was tied to the kidnapping of Ukrainian children, or then we think yesterday Trump was saying, “Oh, I have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un.” And Trump turned off, withdrew U.S. participation in military war games involved in the protection of South Korea. So thus helping another ally of Russia. And we can go down the list. The pattern is irrefutable. This is a man who is working against us. The President of the United States has become the principal enemy of the United States. And that's mind boggling. And it's exactly where we are right now.O’DONNELL: He certainly stands in history as the enemy of every previous president. And that series of Democrat and then Republican presidents back and forth over decades who stood up to the Soviet Union and, in effect, won the Cold War, which was also largely lost by the crazy Soviet Union Russian madness, because it was such a weak economy and such a horribly run country as it is now.ROTHKOPF: Think of the trillions we spent. Think of the tens of thousands of lives that were lost during the Cold War. Think of the efforts that we went to, to build alliances to strengthen Europe. He's dismantling those. He's attacking those. He's talking about pulling troops out of Europe. If Vladimir Putin had sat down at his desk in the Kremlin and said, here is a to-do list for dismantling the U.S. and the threat we see from the U.S. I'm going to put an incompetent in the head of the Pentagon. I'm going to decapitate the Pentagon and its leadership. I'm going to spend its money on frivolous things. I'm going to, you know, wage frivolous wars. I'm going to attack our allies. I'm going to undermine our alliances time after time after time. What he is doing helps Russia, and it devastates us.O’DONNELL: And it also completes the circle of gratitude that begins with Donald Trump saying, Russia, are you listening? Where he's begging Russia and Vladimir Putin in his first presidential campaign to interfere with that campaign and try to harm Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as much as possible.(...)