MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Goes After Herman Cain with Repeated Gotcha Questions in Combative Interview – Complete Video 10/6/11

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This is what passes for journalism at MSNBC.

Here is video from tonight of MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell interviewing Herman Cain. From the beginning of the “interview,” O’Donnell went after Cain with one gotcha question after another. He first tried to get Cain to back off his use of the word “brainwashed” to describe many Democrat voters. Cain would not. Then, he actually attacked Cain with a question on why Cain sat “on the sidelines” during the Civil Rights Movement. O’Donnell specifically asked Cain about Rosa Parks and what would have happened if she had “stayed out of trouble” as Cain’s father had advised him to do. Cain explained he was in High School at the time, and that’s why his Dad had told him that. O’Donnell harangued Cain for being in College from 1963-1967 and sitting on the “sidelines” while the Civil Rights movement played out. However, the facts are that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in December of 1955 – when Herman Cain was only 10 years old.

If that were not bad enough, O’Donnell later also tried to make it look like Herman Cain “avoided” service to his country during the Vietnam War. He asked Cain how he managed to do that. Cain explained his draft board asked him to continue his work in ballistics for the Navy rather than join the military because what he was doing was important. Cain was a mathematician at the time. He also explained he made himself available for the draft, but his number was not called, and he continued his work for the Navy in ballistics. O’Donnell then went after Cain for not joining the military – “like John Kerry did” – ignoring that Cain had already explained that he was serving the nation through his work for the Navy in ballistics, and that his Draft Board had actually asked him to do so.

It is amazing to think that the people on MSNBC attack Fox News as not being real journalists, when they allow their on-air personalities to treat a guest this way. Never have I seen a guest of any political persuasion treated like this on any Fox News program. For his part, Cain did an outstanding job, and certainly shows he can stand up to very harsh questioning. While it may be a little more subtle from others in the media, this is what awaits whoever becomes the GOP Nominee.

  • Harrah75

    Obama was asked almost no difficult questions through the entire 2008 Campaign by the Mainstream Media. Sean Hannity raised the Jeremiah Wright scandal a full year before any media outlet other than Fox News ever reported on it. Anyone but Obama would have been destroyed by association with people like Wright or William Ayers, in whose home Obama’s political career began.

    You can forget trying to argue Obama has been subjected to real scrutiny as a candidate or as President – He simply has not. But the American people are now scrutinizing him – in spite of the media’s failure to do so.

  • Anonymous

    Dinglebarry served himself overseas as a gay prostitute in “Pokee-stan”.

  • Pete

    We need to stop the insanity of asking what someone thought when they were a child 40 years ago, and start asking them about how to fix problems that we have today.  Obama’s plan isn’t working, just ask the millions of unemployed Americans.  9-9-9, will it work?

  • Anonymous

    Stick to your political sports team mentality and your corporate television propaganda and disinformation BS if you choose. Whomever wins they’re all on the same millionaire Wall Street team and they don’t give a flying sh*t about you or anyone you know. Maybe when this nation starts looking a bit more like Calcutta India (and it’s well on it’s way in some places) Americans will disabuse themselves of the ridiculous notion that Republican and Democrat somehow represent different ideologies.

  • Harrah75

    Oh my. The ideologies of the two parties could not be more different.

  • Anonymous

    Nonsense — both major parties in reality have only one ideology: to extract vast amounts of wealth from average Americans and transfer it into the bank accounts of millionaires and billionaires. 

    Convincing people that they stand for differing ideologies is a game that both “sides of the aisle” play. They count on people to be stupidly duped by all of their empty campaign rhetoric and their culture wars, and their litanies of promises into believing that there are vast differences between the two major political parties when in actuality there aren’t.

    But people pathetically continue to believe that if they only vote correctly, things will get better for America. But of course, they never do, and they won’t. Instead, they’ll only continue to get worse as the greedy rich of Washington and Wall Street continue to rob everyone below their own social class blind, and expand their fortunes through global corporatism as much they possibly can.

    This is what is so laughable about this term “job creator” that keeps being thrown around on corporate television lately — as if these Moneybags politicians, and Global Corporatists and Wall Street Crooks will magically start creating jobs in America. When in fact, clearly the only jobs they’ll be creating will be in China, India, Indonesia, etc., etc., just as they have been for the past thirty years. 

    At this point these thieves have amassed more wealth than 150 million of the rest of the American people combined. Meanwhile, Americans continue to refuse to face reality and childishly invest themselves in believing the lies of crooked, bought-off millionaire politicians. And thus duped, continue to divide themselves into bogus left/right camps and viciously go at each others throats over the manufactured smokescreen ideologies these millionaire politicians throw up so we don’t notice that they’re only leading this nation and all of our people to ruin.

  • NEWGUY

    MY QUESTION———
    HOW COME THIS DIRT BAG L. O’DONNELL DID NOT GO INTO THE
    MILITARY????  HE WAS OLD ENOUGH IN 1969.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mary-Ellen-Nissley/100000772935826 Mary Ellen Nissley

    My goodness, can you imagine if he had gone after Obama with such cutthroat tactics?

  • WifeOfDeployedSoldier

    Perhaps, O’Donnell could explain why he didn’t leave Harvard to join the Vietnam War, if he was so offended, on behalf of veterans….but I guess because he doesn’t want to be CIC…that doesn’t matter.  What a hypocrite.

  • bill

    Why stpo there how about Cheney and Limbaugh

  • bill

    Why stpo there how about Cheney and Limbaugh


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