MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell blasted CNN for paying conservative pundit Scott Jennings to “lie about Donald Trump” on-air – calling the rival lefty cable network “absurdly degraded.”
O’Donnell tore into Mark Thompson, the British-American media exec leading CNN who reportedly gave reporters recent instructions to “ease up” on their coverage of Trump’s White House demolition.
“The head of CNN for the last three years, hired by the Trump supporting owner and operator of CNN, is an Englishman who thinks paying Scott Jennings to lie about Donald Trump is money very well spent,” O’Donnell said Monday during his show “The Last Word.”
The host argued that Jennings – a former aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) – “was not always a rabid, lying Trump supporter.”
“When he first started appearing on television, he was capable of criticizing some of the more extreme Trump positions, but Scott Jennings figured out where the money is and how he could get his own podcast and decided to become the ‘JD Vance of CNN,’” he ranted.
In a biting response on X, Jennings wrote: “No, Lawrence, I do not have time to save your show.”
During a recent interview with Mediaite, Thompson – who took the helm at CNN in 2023 – showered Jennings with praise, comparing him to D’Artagnon, the hero of “The Three Musketeers.”
“He’s got his sword out and he’s got about four Democrats against him, but he spiked them all off,” Thompson gushed.
“He’s a worthy opponent, as it were, for the Democrats in the room…and it makes for not just good television, but also for in some ways, a slightly deeper testing of the ideas all the way around that table.”
O’Donnell jibed that it was the “single goofiest thing ever said by anyone in charge of CNN,” nicknaming Thompson the “lost-in-America Englishman.”
“Good television,” O’Donnell scoffed. “Here’s how bad that television is that they make over there. The show that Scott Jennings frequents the most is on opposite this program. And that show on a good night gets half – half of the audience of this show.”
CNN’s “NewsNight with Abby Phillip,” a panel-style show that often features Jennings, airs at 10 p.m. ET on weekdays – the same slot as O’Donnell’s show.
“This program usually has an audience triple the size of the terrible, terrible television that Scott Jennings is delivering on the absurdly degraded version of CNN, presided over by the man who thinks lying for Donald Trump on TV is an honorable pursuit and should be paid for by CNN,” O’Donnell boasted.
CNN declined to comment. MSNBC did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Meanwhile, Bari Weiss, the new boss at CBS News, is reportedly hoping to poach Jennings from CNN.
The pair met at the Tiffany Network’s New York headquarters last week, according to the news site Semafor.
CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, has launched a media auction, combing through potential bidders including Paramount Skydance, which controls CBS.
