That Escalated Quickly! Lawrence O’Donnell Goes Off On Morning Joe Over Donald Trump’s Salary

This is what orange-haired troll Donald Trump has done to our already dysfunctional political discourse. During Thursday morning’s broadcast of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, co-host and noted Trump admirer Joe Scarborough got into a huge on-air head-to-head tussle with colleague Lawrence O’Donnell over Trump’s NBC salary. In a press release on Wednesday, Trump declared that he has even more money than he revealed just a month ago, claiming his net worth is now TEN BILLION DOLLARS! (Caps courtesy of Trump’s statement.) Trump’s campaign says that all financial disclosures have been provided to the FEC for verification.

During a panel discussion that contained roughly a thousand pundits, O’Donnell bluntly stated that Trump is absolutely lying about the money he has made from NBC over his time hosting The Apprentice. According to Trump, he made well over $200 million from NBC for the 14 seasons he appeared on the air. O’Donnell refuted this claim, stating that NBC (he and Scarborough’s employer) paid The Donald far less, stating that Trump was making roughly #1 million a season at the end, and even less at the beginning.

This led to Scarborough mocking O’Donnell, with the help of come of the panelists. While it appeared that Scarborough thought this was all in fun due to it being about Trump, O’Donnell did not find any humor in the way JoeScar was talking to him. While O’Donnell continued to say Trump was lying about his NBC salary, Scarborough continued to dismiss him and invited others to make fun of his fellow MSNBC employee. Eventually, thankfully, the segment came to an end, all with Trump gleefully smiling over the chaos he has wrought. (Trump would later call in and bet O’Donnell a year’s salary that he’s being truthful about what NBC paid him. Yes, that really happened.)

Later on in the show, with O’Donnell not on the panel, Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski brought up O’Donnell’s statements and his reaction to Scarborough and the rest of the panel. They claimed that Lawrence screamed and called everyone a liar, including NBC execs. (In reality, O’Donnell only called Trump a liar and lectured Joe for believing Trump over NBC.) Scarborough also pointed out that they may scream in prime time, but they don’t do it on Morning Joe. (Are you fucking kidding me, Joe? Have you even fucking watched your show?!?!?)

This did not sit well with O’Donnell, and he took to Twitter to express his anger at Joe and the rest of the crew.

NBC said @realDonaldTrump lied about his NBC salary and @Morning_Joe believes Trump.

— Lawrence O’Donnell (@Lawrence) July 16, 2015

.@AJTheTVphile @JoeNBC Joe obviously has no idea what I actually said.

— Lawrence O’Donnell (@Lawrence) July 16, 2015

No one in political talk TV knows anything about paychecks in entertainment TV. @Morning_Joe

— Lawrence O’Donnell (@Lawrence) July 16, 2015

.@Morning_Joe proved why @realDonaldTrump impresses Republican voters. NBC said Trump lied about his NBC $ & Joe still believes Trump.

— Lawrence O’Donnell (@Lawrence) July 16, 2015

Note to @Morning_Joe Try to reserve all your inaccurate descriptions of what I said to when I’m actually still on your set to correct you.

— Lawrence O’Donnell (@Lawrence) July 16, 2015

.@NYShorty My favorite part of it was @JoeNBC lecture about how rude we are in msnbc prime time. @Morning_Joe

— Lawrence O’Donnell (@Lawrence) July 16, 2015

In the words of Ron Burgundy:

This is where we are now in the national political scene — debating over how much a boorish egotistical racist made on his reality TV show.