MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell apologizes for false report claiming President Trump had "Russian cosigners" for his loans.

Lawrence O'Donnell. Wikipedia user Er-nay.

MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell apologizes for false report claiming that President Trump had "Russian cosigners" for his loans. Fox News. Yesterday O'Donnell claimed on Rachel Maddow's show that he had a source that told him that Deutsche Bank had proof that President Trump was only able to get loans because Russian oligarchs had cosigned for them. The story had zero proof and only a single source who went unnamed. President Trump threatened to sue O'Donnell and MSNBC and O'Donnell apologized about the story. 

Last night I made an error in judgment by reporting an item about the president’s finances that didn’t go through our rigorous verification and standards process. I shouldn’t have reported it and I was wrong to discuss it on the air. I will address the issue on my show tonight.

— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) August 28, 2019

My Comment:
Once again, some very irresponsible reporting from MSNBC. I remember watching Twitter last night and seeing this story trend. The first thing I thought was "this is fake news". I didn't even know the source at this point but I knew it didn't make any sense.

Why? Because there was a two year investigation in President Trump and his family that found no collusion with Russia. If there had been any links to Russian cosigners Robert Mueller and his team would have found it. There was basically no way this story could be true. But a lot of people immediately believed it and the story trended on Twitter for about a day.

Which begs the question, why did O'Donnell report it as fact in the first place? Was it incompetence or enemy action? Did he get the story wrong or did he lie on purpose? I'd believe either and both explanations are plausible.

It's very possible that O'Donnell, who is obviously biased against the President, simply wanted to believe it was true. In his mind Trump is bad and any bad story about him is probably true. His source told him what he wanted to hear and he didn't ask any questions. He didn't follow the basic standards of his profession because he was excited to "get Trump" and ended up getting burned for it. 

It's either that or he lied on purpose. He knew that his statements would spread like wildfire and trend on Twitter. And he also knows that his retraction and apology will be ignored by the kind of people that watch MSNBC in the first place. He knows even if the story is false, reporting it as true will damage the President and increase his ratings. Anything to damage the President.

Whatever the scenario, let this be another reminder to not trust the mainstream media these days. When it comes to certain stories, like President Trump, gun rights or Brexit, you should always wait a few days because more often than not the story falls apart. Especially if it comes from the biased "journalists" at MSNBC.