President Joe Biden sat down for a rare interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell just days before his presidency will come to an end. But O’Donnell squandered the rare opportunity to hold Biden accountable. Instead of challenging Biden on the monumental failures that have defined his time in office, O’Donnell opted for a series of softball, “soul-searching” questions that were more an exercise in self-indulgence than in truth-seeking.
O’Donnell invited Biden to engage in self-reflection, raising the question of what Biden’s late son, Beau, would think of his father’s presidency and asking Biden how he felt at the end of his dark farewell speech.
“You’ve served in government longer than any person who’s ever served in this job,” O’Donnell asked. “What did that feel like at the end of that, that speech?”
At one point, O’Donnell even asked about Biden’s purported concerns about an “oligarchy,” referencing a vague warning Biden gave in his farewell address about the alleged tech-industrial complex.
“You issued the warning about the power of the tech-industrial complex, an echo of President Eisenhower in this very room in his farewell address, warning about the military-industrial complex,” O’Donnell said. “And you said that an oligarchy is taking shape that threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. How does this oligarchy affect people out there who’ve never used the word ‘oligarchy’?”
O’Donnell notably did not ask Biden why he awarded billionaire election-meddler George Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The tongue-bath didn’t end there, with O’Donnell gushing over the “magic trick” that Biden pulled in getting an “infrastructure bill” signed into law. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act threw billions of dollars into furthering the left’s climate agenda, with $7.5 billion alone being allotted to subsidize the building of electric vehicle chargers. As of March, only seven were built, according to The Washington Post.
“You combined domestic policy and foreign policy in a way that I’ve never heard another president do,” O’Donnell said, further praising Biden for the “largest list of domestic achievements that I can think of, certainly in my lifetime of watching this.”
Notably, most Americans are still waiting to feel these “achievements.”
O’Donnell also brought up economists’ warnings that legislation Biden had touted would cause a recession. But apparently, in O’Donnell’s world, the recession “has not happened.” Notably, the White House and staunch defenders of Biden bent over backward to redefine what “recession” meant. For decades, recessions have been defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. But as the economy tanked under Biden, the White House Council of Economic Advisers said such a definition is “neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle.”
Perhaps O’Donnell’s tongue bath should be expected considering he once lambasted fellow reporters because they dared to question White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s refusal to directly answer a question.
O’Donnell’s “interview” was nothing more than a scripted love letter to a president in the twilight of his tenure. O’Donnell’s soft questions and deferential tone ensured Biden faced no real scrutiny during an interview that should have been an opportunity for real accountability.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
