If you’ve ever tuned into The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC (they have a new name MS NOW), you know Lawrence O’Donnell isn’t gentle in his political commentary. He’s the anchor who leans in, raises the volume, dares you to look away—and I find that refreshing in the often overly-polite landscape of cable news. Born November 7, 1951 in Boston, O’Donnell has a Harvard-economics background, years spent in Senate staff work, and time spent as writer/actor/producer for shows like The West Wing. His CV gives him a distinctive lens: policy-influenced, legislative-aware, less fluff, more raw.
Recently, coverage in the news spotlight him zeroing in yet again on the state of democracy under Donald Trump and what O’Donnell sees as the unraveling of norms. When a poll cited in a news article notes “over six in 10 disapprove of how Trump is handling the tariffs, the economy and managing the federal government,” O’Donnell uses it to say: “If there’s a shred of truth in anything that Donald Trump says, it would be, ‘Well, I haven’t thought about it.’ And that is the truth of everything Donald Trump does and doesn’t do as president,” and another quote when he doesn’t hold back: “It takes Trumpian stupidity to say something like that… Donald Trump is trapped in his stupidity. There is no way he can fake being smart about anything…”
O’Donnell openly describes himself as a socialist— “I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left of you mere liberals,” he once said. Is watching O’Donnell confirmation bias? Of course, but I don’t need Fox News to confirm that the courageous Jessica Tarlov will be leveling intellectual body checks against the stupidity of Greg Gutfeld; I know it’s happening.
When Tuesday’s Democratic clean sweep brought a sense of hope back to Democrats, I couldn’t wait to see O’Donnell’s victory lap after worrying night after night about the veins in his head causing him a stroke. It’s been his show I’ve watched nightly, worrying when he’s away and nervously checking his socials for fear Trump has put a network hit on him a la Colbert; that we’d have to fight for him like we did Kimmel. One wonders how he escapes the authoritarian wrath he rails against five nights a week. It’s a relief to watch someone articulate so cleanly the systemic anxieties we’ve collectively doom-scrolled for a year.
Reminding me of days when our family would tune in to Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite or Tom Brokaw to bring us the news, I rely on O’Donnell to deliver the state of the democracy from an unflinching lack of fear of its current and temporary takeover by a tyrant. O’Donnell believes the stakes are high, that the presidency matters, that institutions matter, and that what’s happening now isn’t business as usual. His commentary carries weight.
That style is double-edged. The intensity of his language—the sweeping indictments, the blunt phrasing—can feel polarizing. For viewers who don’t agree with his starting premises, his tone is unapologetically unbalanced. In a moment when many TV hosts moderate their language or play “both sides,” O’Donnell picks a side with a sense of moral urgency.
We often hear “the norms are broken” or “democracy is under threat.” O’Donnell doesn’t just say it in a vague way — he tries to map out how those norms are being broken, step by step. He anchors the wonky details (poll numbers, legislative history, institutional context) in a clear voice sometimes punctuated with anchor desk-pounding.
O’Donnell is a nightly check-in. I flip on The Last Word, brace myself, and walk away with a sense of what the damage might be, and what it might mean. It’s not always comfortable—but it’s reliable.
So yes: Happy birthday, Lawrence O’Donnell. Thanks for staying heavy on the “why this matters” and not backing off. Whether you agree with him or not, I’d argue we need voices willing to lean hard into the breakdown, map the decay, call out the stakes, and ask: What happens if we don’t stop this?