MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell laid into President Donald Trump for suggesting he should nominate himself as chair of the Federal Reserve, claiming Trump’s comment was “indicative of dementia.“
O’Donnell opened his nightly show The Last Word by attacking Trump’s comment, which the president made in jest to reporters on Wednesday as he blasted Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates. “Am I allowed to appoint myself at the Fed? I’d do a much better job than these people,” Trump said.
Trump has repeatedly railed against Powell’s decisions, deriding him as “Too Late Powell.” Powell’s term expires in May 2026, and Trump has considered candidates to replace him.
“It may be tiresome to hear, but we must not grow weary of making the point that no other president was ever capable of saying anything as stupid or as indicative of dementia as that‚” O’Donnell said.
When reached for comment, the White House pointed to a statement Rep. Ronny Jackson, Trump’s former White House physician, gave earlier this month after California Gov. Gavin Newsom questioned Trump’s cognitive state. “He is mentally and physically sharper than ever before,” Jackson said. (Captain Sean P. Barbabella, DO, is the current White House physician.)
O’Donnell also took a shot at the press, claiming the comment would have generated massive headlines in papers like The New York Times, The Washington Post, “and every newspaper in the country” if former President Joe Biden had suggested it. Biden’s cognitive state has been under intense scrutiny by various reporters and books.
“If we grow weary of making the point of how singularly stupid and possibly clinically demented Donald Trump’s statements are, then we will become part of the normalization process of those statements, which most of the American news media has unwittingly participated in,” O’Donnell said. “14-year-olds in this country will think it’s perfectly normal for a president to say those things.”
O’Donnell said the statement was even more critical as Trump weighed whether to join Israel’s assault on Iran.
“On a day when the president of the United States is reportedly in a meeting in the Situation Room where he is trying to decide how much to support or fully join a war that he opposed a week ago,” O’Donnell said, “it must be reported as part of that very same story, that the person who is supposed to be in charge in that Situation Room meeting… doesn’t know if he can appoint himself chair of the Federal Reserve.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also caught some strays in O’Donnell’s monologue.
“Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump have no idea that Donald Trump doesn’t even have the legal power to fire the chair of the Federal Reserve, and he also doesn’t have the power to unilaterally replace the chair of the Federal Reserve because it requires a confirmation vote by the United States Senate. That’s how small the brain is,” the host added.
O’Donnell also cited Trump’s various claims of ending wars in the Middle East and Ukraine on the first day of his presidency and promising “White Lotus-style beach resorts in Gaza” as evidence of his alleged mental decline.
“If that is not a sign of dementia in a 79-year-old man, then it is at minimum proof that Donald Trump has no idea what he’s talking about—whenever he talks,” O’Donnell said. “If Donald Trump gets dementia, how will we know?”
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