MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell trashed President Donald Trump over what they called signs of cognitive “collapse” worthy of an “intervention.”
Trump posted a fake AI video of House and Senate Minority Leaders Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Monday featuring Jeffries in a sombrero and moustache and Schumer spewing fabricated dialogue over a mariachi soundtrack.
That followed a truly bizarre post Saturday in which Trump published a fake AI-generated video news report about himself and a bonkers “Med Bed” conspiracy theory being presented as fact.
Trump later deleted the post.
During the show toss on Monday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Last Word, O’Donnell and Maddow reacted to the newest video with shock and horror, and used both incidents to question Trump’s mental fitness:
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL: There`s one piece of it that`s changed just in the last hour and it`s something I`m hesitant to bring up, but I don`t know how to not bring it up. And that is that Donald Trump has posted on social media a truly horrible A.I. fake video of Leader Jeffries and Leader Schumer standing in the White House driveway.
It`s using the video that was created when they were standing on the White House driveway this afternoon and it puts completely false words, every word is a lie in Chuck Schumer`s mouth. And Chuck Schumer is speaking as profanely as Donald Trump does publicly in a on a routine basis.
This is — this is not anything Chuck Schumer would ever say. And it actually ends with Donald Trump`s invented version of Chuck Schumer, with Chuck Schumer saying that all Democrats, all elected Democrats in America, all of them are pieces of crap.
This is — this is the president of the United States. This is now something that the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, this will be his first moment — public moment since that thing has gone public.
RACHEL MADDOW: Wow.
O`DONNELL: I`m going to have to give him a chance to respond to that in a discussion that was supposed to be about, how do you keep the government of the United States working? How do you keep it going on the brink of this possible shutdown?
MADDOW: I mean, I just spoke with the governor of Oregon where Trump is deploying federal troops. One of the things we talked about was her impression that the reason he`s deploying troops to Oregon is because there were things he saw on social media that are from years ago that somebody told him or he got the misimpression are now. And so that`s what he thinks he`s sending troops to Oregon to quell because he has no idea that video that he`s looking at might not be current news because he`s seen it recently, so therefore it must be recent.
The president also this weekend posted bizarre fake A.I. video where he was promising magic med beds to everybody in America that can cure every disease in the world and help you regrow lost limbs. He posted an fake A.I. video of himself. He posted it this weekend before taking it down. And now he`s using, as you say, a fake A.I. video to demean and put words in the mouth of the Democrats who he just met in person at the White House.
I mean, this is like — if this were a junior high school student, there`d be an intervention involving the family. You know what I`m saying? But when this is the president, where do you — what do you — I mean, how do —
O`DONNELL: No, we are — we are watching publicly a very dramatic mental decline in Donald Trump. This is a sharp cliff that he`s just fallen off uh within the last fortnight, especially — especially over this particular weekend of social media posting.
It has been a stunning weekend. It`s something I was going to get into anyway in talking about how do you talk to a guy who just did this, you know, and this is what he had done before Leader Jeffries walked into the room, before Leader Schumer walked into the room.
Now, we see what he`s done after they left the room. And it`s even worse. And it — the question of how can you possibly negotiate with this man becomes all the more vivid.
MADDOW: And it`s not just like transgressive or offensive or bad. It`s also just weird.
O`DONNELL: Yeah.
MADDOW: It`s really weird stuff.
O`DONNELL: Yeah.
MADDOW: Like there`s some — there`s something weird going on up there.
O`DONNELL: Yeah. It`s inexplicable. And it is absolutely worthy of a family intervention.
There`s no other family in America that would let a 79-year-old do things like this publicly. They would absolutely intervene. It would — it would be the only thing every family member wanted to do. They would do it urgently.
And this 79-year-old just continues to collapse publicly.
MADDOW: Yeah. I mean, literally the only good thing about him being president in these terms is that he can`t drive, which is good.
O`DONNELL: Yeah.
MADDOW: So, they don`t have to worry about taking the keys away, but other than that, yeah, you`re on to it. Let me get out of your way, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: Thank you, Rachel. Thank you.
