Laurence O’Donnell has opened fire on White House Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, accusing him of the uttering the “stupidest public lie ever told.”
On his MSNBC show The Last Word, O’Donnell took the former Fox News host’s Thursday press conference appearance apart, including bringing up claims of Hegseth’s previous issues with alcohol.
“Pete Hegseth was reported to have had such a severe drinking problem while working as a weekend morning host at Fox that he promised Republican senators that he would not drink if they voted to confirm him as secretary of defense,” O’Donnell said.
“And so we’re just going to have to assume that Pete Hegseth was stone cold sober today when he said something that sounds like it belongs in the great Comedy Central TV series Drunk History.”
Drunk History features people reenacting historical stories on camera while drinking alcohol and increasingly stumbling over their words.
As part of The Last Word, O’Donnell aired Hegseth telling a press conference on Thursday that, “President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history”, in reference to the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear base.
“It’s that kind of thing that wouldn’t be surprising for him to say if he still had his job at Fox and was drunk at a hotel bar,” O’Donnell claimed.
The host claimed it was, “The stupidest public lie ever told by a secretary of defense.”
O’Donnell continued, “Now, some secretaries of defense, particularly during the Vietnam War, found themselves telling worse lies, more important lies about their plans to win the war that we lost, decisively, but those secretaries weren’t telling lies that were provably false in the moment that they said them.
“A presumably sober Pete Hegseth actually said Donald Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history. Donald Trump directed nothing. Donald Trump said ‘Go!’ to a plan that has been in place for many, many years.”
He added, “Pete Hegseth promised Republican senators that he would not drink if he became secretary of defense, but he did not promise that he wouldn’t sound drunk.”
Hegseth denied a New Yorker story last year that included claims of drinking at work, with a statement from the Trump administration reading, “These disgusting allegations are completely unfounded and false, and anyone peddling these defamatory lies to score political cheap shots is sickening.”
Hegseth has been approached by the Daily Beast for comment.
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