Lawrence O'Donnell Spots New York Times 'Confession' To 'Sane-Washing' Trump

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell fiercely rebuked The New York Times on Monday for “sane-washing” Donald Trump’s nonsensical ramblings and pointed out the newspaper’s latest infraction.

The Times published an article on Monday headlined, “As Debate Looms, Trump Is Now the One Facing Questions About Age and Capacity.” It pointed to voter concerns about “his rambling, sometimes incoherent public statements.”

“The Times article does not use the term sane-washing — which describes the way some in the news media edit Donald Trump’s crazy statements down to a shape that allows them to then try to make sense of them — but the article does offer The New York Times’ own confession about doing exactly that,” O’Donnell said on “The Last Word.”

The so-called “confession” came in a passage in the article where the Times reflects on the former president’s recent word salad response to a question about how he would make child care more affordable.

The Times wrote: “Often his mangled statements are summarized in news accounts in ways that do not give the full picture of how baffling they can be. Quoting them at length, though, can provide additional context.”

The newspaper then included a lengthy quote of Trump’s incoherent rambling.

But in the very next passage, it committed another “sane-washing” offense, O’Donnell noted.

In its interpretation of Trump’s near-gibberish quote, the Times wrote, “What he seemed to be saying was that he would raise so much money by imposing tariffs on imported goods that the country could use the proceeds to pay for child care. In itself, that would be a disputable policy assumption.”

“They couldn’t get through the whole article without doing it,” O’Donnell exclaimed.

“Here is the New York Times’ attempt at a cure for its own habit of sane-washing, in which, in the end, it sane-washes Donald Trump again,” he added.

The Times “hallucinated that explanation into existence,” he added, noting that even if Trump had said anything about using tariff revenue to have the government pay for child care, doing so would raise taxes on American consumers — not on foreign nations, as Trump claimed.

Trump’s remarks were not a “disputable policy assumption,” but rather, “completely impossible,” O’Donnell said, decrying “intellectual rot” at the Times for letting his lies about tariffs stand unchallenged.

Economists have said that Trump’s tariff proposals would likely have a negative effect on the economy and lead to higher costs for American households.

“Tariffs are taxes on you!” O’Donnell emphasized.

Check out O’Donnell’s scathing analysis below.