MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell announced he's taking a week off due to what he said was exhaustion caused by President Donald Trump's administration.
“I know you’ve pledged to cover and be here for the first hundred days of the Trump presidency. I hope you noticed that I did not make that same pledge,” O’Donnell told MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow on Thursday (March 13).
“This is day 52. I thought it was day 92. It turns out it’s day 52, Rachel, and I’m exhausted at day 52, and so I’m going to take next week off. And I’m telling you that now because I know you don’t like it when I just drift away. I’m just taking next week off, then I can come back and go with you all the way to the hundred days,” O’Donnell continued.
“We all tell each other, you have to take care of yourself. You got to pace yourself. You got to be in this for the long haul. So I can’t hold it against you, but I’m very sad,” Maddow responded before joking "Can I go with you?"
“No, no, no. You said 100 days, you said 100 days. You can’t. One hundred days,” O’Donnell said.
O'Donnell then turned his attention to Trump specifically.
“And so America is at this hour completing the 52nd day of having a President of the United States whose brain does not work. Donald Trump’s brain is broken, badly damaged, as he exhibits every day. And once again, today, Donald Trump said something that would have gotten any other president rushed to the hospital for a neurological examination and an evaluation for dementia, for starters. That’s where they would have begun,” he said, referring comments made by the president about Sen. Chuck Schumer.
The incident is the latest between Trump and the network after the president claimed Maddow and fellow anchor Nicolle Wallace "should be forced to resign" while addressing a recent controversy involving Devarjaye 'DJ' Daniel, a 13-year-old cancer survivor he honored during his address to Congress earlier this week.
"I thought it was very embarrassing for the Democrats, what happened the other night. Even CNN 'Fake News' said that. They came out and said it. And worse than CNN is ‘MS-DNC,’ which is the worst, Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Thursday (March 6), mocking MSNBC as being pro-Democrat, via FOX News. "And the good news is very few people watch them anymore. They've lost such credibility."
"Frankly, what Nicolle Wallace said - I've never been a fan of hers, and she's not very talented, but I will tell you what she said the other day about the young man is disgraceful. She should be forced to resign," Trump said.
"And Rachel Maddow should be forced to resign. Nobody watches her anyway. I don't know - it's not possible they pay her as much money as I hear. But certainly she's lost all credibility, both of them. But what they said the other day, they should be forced to resign about that young person, who is suffering greatly," he added.
Trump also publicly celebrated the firing of anchor Joy Reid last month.
"Lowlife Chairman of 'Concast,' Brian Roberts, the owner of Ratings Challenged NBC and MSDNC, has finally gotten the nerve up to fire one of the least talented people in television, the mentally obnoxious racist, Joy Reid," Trump wrote on his Truth Social account. "Based on her ratings, which were virtually non-existent, she should have been “canned” long ago, along with everyone else who works there."