MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Highlights New People Magazine Trump Sexual Assault Report
O’Donnell: “Trying To Read This, It Isn’t Easy”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From the October 12 edition of MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell:
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL (HOST): Here is People magazine, obviously this has been a legally vetted, carefully legally vetted report. They would not publish it without that. Reporting that this reporter alone with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago with Melania, his wife, upstairs, “and Donald Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat.” That is precisely what he said to Billy Bush was his modus operandi.
MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Well and apparently it's the same thing that he tried to do with the woman on -- the woman that was sitting next to him on the airplane, and then more recently, to a 22-year-old receptionist in 2005. This is clearly a pattern. But your just reading that statement, Lawrence, was gut-wrenching. And I can't imagine any viewer right now not either in tears or feeling uncomfortable. Because he is taking us to a very dark place. And the fact that these women are sharing their bravery with us of sexual assault, is -- I have to applaud them. Because it's something that cannot be easy. And it's finally giving voice to so many people out there that feel that they have been alone for so long. And I feel that this is, you know, we're on October 12. But not only is this a pattern, but I could expect more. And hopefully things that are not more ruthless on his ability to prey on women.
[…]
O’DONNELL: Nancy Giles here with us in the studio. This is the part where, I mean you've seen me trying to read this, it isn't easy.
NANCY GILES: No, it's awful, it's awful. As a woman who has grown up in New York and has lived through the kind of rude things that guys can sometimes say in the street, construction workers, being on a packed subway and feeling somebody pressing up against you, they're bad enough. What these women are describing is just God awful. And, you know, I can only repeat and agree with what the other two women on the panel have said. It almost doesn't seem like America. You wonder how somebody that started his campaign with such horrible things said about Mexicans, and the accusations, the claims that all black people are dodging bullets and living in hell, and attacking a judge. And with his own ego and his own remarks kind of coming back to choke him, it's almost Shakespearean, actually, because his ego in the end and his need to be on TV and on the radio and out there and publicized, and a big important person, those are the exact words that are going to come back. And actions I think will haunt him.
Previously: