Lawrence O’Donnell doesn’t hold back on Trump’s new attack on the press: “The single most ridiculous lawsuit ever filed”
MSNBC host Lawerence O’Donnell took Donald Trump to task about his lawsuit against The New York Times calling the court filing a “stack of non-sense.”
Donald Trump’s cadre of lawyers whipped out another defamation lawsuit against a newspaper company and its reporters, this time it was The New York Times’ turn. Trump is seeking $15 billion in redress from the media outlet.
He claims that the newspaper attempted to undermine his chances of returning to the White House and tarnish his reputation as a successful businessman in a series of articles and a book that were published before the 2024 presidential elections.
The move by the now-US president drew rebuke not just from the Times, which said, “the lawsuit has no merit” and “lacks any legitimate legal claims,” but also Lawerence O’Donnell, who used the airtime on his MSNBC show ‘The Last Word with Lawerence O’Donnell’ to delve into what is really behind the lawsuit.
NEWS: Trump has filed a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times, a few of their writers, and Penguin Random House, seemingly because they published things about him he didn’t like. pic.twitter.com/xODczDrBj1
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) September 16, 2025
“The single most ridiculous lawsuit ever filed”
O’Donnell started off his taking Trump to task about “this crazy lawsuit,” saying that it is “the single most ridiculous lawsuit ever filed by the most ridiculous litigant in American political history.”
He pointed out that you cannot sue someone for having an opinion and endorsing a political candidate, in this case the Times endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
He went on to question why it took Trump so long to have his lawyers file “this stack of non-sense,” before rhetorically asking, “or did it?”
“How many of these things, these stacks of paper does the Donald Trump lawsuit factory have ready to go on a day when Donald Trump thinks he really needs one of these?” O’Donnell wondered aloud.
He proposed that it was, once again, just another attempt at distracting from something scandalous in the news cycle. O’Donnell offered a couple reasons Epstein and another Times article on a previously unreported connection between “two giant deals” that involve the sale of advanced AI chips to the United Arab Emirates and that nation’s investments in Trump’s cryptocurrency coin.
The ghost of Epstein continues to haunt Trump
FBI Director Kash Patel sat down for a confrontational Senate hearing on Tuesday where he was grilled about the Jeffery Epstein and his agency’s foot-dragging on releasing them to the public. The issue has been dogging Trump’s second term in office.
During the 2024 campaign Trump said that he would have the files released. And those in the Department of Justice that could do so also made that promise.
However, when it became known that Trump’s name was in the files, officials in his administration back walked many of their statements, leading to ever more frustration among lawmakers and the public.
AI chips and cryptocurrency investment: Quid pro quo?
The New York Times published an article titled ‘Anatomy of Two Giant Deals: The U.A.E. Got Chips. The Trump Team Got Crypto Riches’, on Monday.
In it they lay out how the timing and the people involved in two transactions involving the UAE overlapped, one the sale of “the world’s most advanced and scarce” AI computer chips and another a $2 billion investment in World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency start-up founded by the Trump family and that of Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy.
“While there is no evidence that one deal was explicitly offered in return for the other, the confluence of the two agreements is itself extraordinary,” stated the Times. “Taken together, they blurred the lines between personal and government business and raised questions about whether U.S. interests were served.”
Before heading off on his state visit to the United Kingdom, y Australian Broadcasting Corporation reporter John Lyons questioned Trump about his business activities since he’s been in the White House for a second time.
“Can it be appropriate, President Trump, that a president in office should be engaged in so much business activity?” Lyons asked.
Trump responded that it’s his children that are running the business before making a not so veiled threat telling Lyons that he is “hurting Australia” and that “they want to get along with me.”
“Your leader is coming over very soon. I’m going to tell him about you.”
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