Lawrence O’Donnell: Trump’s Tough Guy Persona Has ‘Collapsed’

Lawrence O’Donnell skewered President Trump on Tuesday evening, remarking that the commander-in-chief’s “gun-toting tough guy” image has “collapsed” in the wake of the Iran War and his “secret flight” out of Turkey in July.

The Washington Post reported this week that Trump secretly flew out of Turkey after a NATO summit last month on an alternate military aircraft in response to assassination threats from Iran. Trump reportedly switched planes by secretly riding in a catering truck, while the journalists and most of the staff aboard Air Force One that night were never notified of his absence.

“It is uniquely Donald Trump among American presidents who asks, wants, to be judged on his personal bravery and all around tough-guy toughness,” O’Donnell said Tuesday night. “That is what makes Donald Trump’s secret flight out of danger uniquely undermining to both his own self-image and what he wants his most fanatic supporters to believe about him.”

“Donald Trump has asked the world to see him as a movie hero, the physically bravest president ever, when he is clearly the laziest president ever,” he continued. The anchor then compared Trump’s secret flight out of Turkey to former President Bill Clinton’s decision to switch planes during a dangerous trip in and out of Pakistan while he was still in office.

O’Donnell noted that, according to members of Clinton’s administration, the former president made sure the journalists aboard Air Force One that night were aware that he was not on the same flight as them, while still keeping the switch secret from terrorist threats. The MS NOW host pointed to that difference as proof of Trump’s inability to live up to his self-imposed action-hero persona.

“Donald Trump sadly failed his own self-imposed test: The Hollywood Hero Test; the standard he pretends to achieve in his fake images of himself as a brave, gun-toting tough guy,” O’Donnell said. He then went on to expand the scope of his criticism, calling Trump’s conflicts with Greenland, Canada and Iran further evidence of his presidential shortcomings.

“Every imaginary asset that Donald Trump was supposed to be bringing to the presidency in the minds of Trump voters is collapsing,” O’Donnell explained. “His tough guy image was already weakened by the people of Greenland standing up to Donald Trump’s madman threats; Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who is normally as mild-mannered as Canadian Prime Ministers usually are, has stood up boldly to the incoherent bullying from Donald Trump and shown the world what real governing toughness looks like and sounds like.”

“Donald Trump’s phony image as the great negotiator has collapsed completely, even with Trump supporters, during Donald Trump’s war with Iran, now on its 165th day,” he added, before rolling a clip of Trump recently proclaiming himself Iran’s “banker.”

“‘I am their banker,’ says the most lost man ever to live in the White House,” O’Donnell concluded. “Everything Donald Trump has touched has turned to chaos.”