Lawrence O'Donnell took a page out of his former colleague Keith Olbermann's book when he delivered a scathing condemnation of Bill O'Reilly on his Monday show. Among other things, O'Donnell called his time slot rival a "joke" and a serial liar.
O'Donnell's takedown was prompted by a comment O'Reilly made in a recent broadcast, where he said there were "strains of anti-Americanism" on MSNBC. O'Donnell said this was an example of O'Reilly's ease with falsehoods.
"He has by now figured out exactly what his audience wants to hear, and that's what he delivers," he said. "And when that requires lying, O'Reilly can do it without blinking because he's discovered that there's a lot of money to be made in those lies."
O'Donnell said that he saw in O'Reilly "a very, very, very rich man who has grown phenomenally rich by playing a character on TV that the most gullible audience in the history of television falls for."
He also said that he saw:
"dozens of guys I grew up with who were just like him. Overbearing, argumentative, Irish guys who think they know everything and can back up nothing. Those guys have always been a joke to me, which is why O'Reilly almost never has the capacity to outrage me, because he is just a joke to me most of the time."
The audience, O'Donnell concluded, should not be fooled by O'Reilly's "faux-Irish tough guy style."
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