Media

MSNBC’s O’Donnell: John Kelly ‘invents lies to attack and insult women’

by Joe Concha - 10/20/17 12:47 PM ET

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell blasted White House chief of staff John Kelly in a tweet Friday, saying Kelly “invents lies to attack and insult women.”

The “Last Word” host’s criticism of Kelly, whose son was killed fighting in Afghanistan in 2010, comes after Kelly’s Thursday afternoon defense of President Trump’s remarks to a fallen soldier’s widow.

Kelly also slammed Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) for listening to the call Trump made to the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed during an ambush in Niger along with three other U.S. soldiers. Wilson has known Johnson’s family for decades.

“It stuns me that a member of Congress would’ve listened in on that conversation,” Kelly said of Wilson during a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room on Thursday. “I thought at least that was sacred.”

“In the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, she stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building,” he continued. “We were stunned. Stunned that she had done it. Even for someone who was that empty of a barrel, we were stunned. But we didn’t go to the press.”

Kelly was referring to an FBI field office in Wilson’s district in Florida that was dedicated to two agents in 2015 killed by drug traffickers in 1986.

“I was not even in Congress in 2009 when the money for the building was secured,” Wilson said Friday on CNN’s “New Day.” “So that’s a lie. How dare he? However, I named the building at the behest of [then-FBI Director James Comey] with the help of [then-House Speaker John Boehner], working across party lines. So he didn’t tell the truth.”

O’Donnell took exception to Kelly’s remarks on social media.

“Kelly is a better fit for Trump than media thought. He too invents lies to attack and insult women,” O’Donnell wrote in a tweet retweeted more than 5,000 times.

Kelly is a better fit for Trump than media thought. He too invents lies to attack and insult women. https://t.co/nDh3Sugoun

— Lawrence O’Donnell (@Lawrence) October 19, 2017

“They have more in common then John Kelly realizes,” O’Donnell said at the beginning of his show on MSNBC Thursday. “They were both born in segregated cities. They both went to segregated schools.”

“John Kelly never sat next to Frederica Wilson in his elementary school,” he added.

“I didn’t mind hearing John Kelly disagree with Congresswoman Wilson today,” O’Donnell added. “I understand the disagreement nature and some of it is deeply personal for him as a Gold Star father.”

“But I was stunned, stunned when I watched him demonize her and very deliberately continue to dehumanize her and refuse to give her the dignity of a name and call her an empty barrel. He went out of his way to do it,” O’Donnell said.

Wilson has called the president a “jerk” and a “sick man” while also stating that Kelly’s “empty barrel” statement about her was racist.

“That’s a racist term,” Wilson said on CNN. “We looked it up in the dictionary because I had never heard of an empty barrel. And I don’t like to be dragged into something like that.”

Tags Boehner Frederica Wilson John Boehner John Kelly