To paraphrase Sean Spicer, this transcript speaks for itself.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: Well, today was, really was, as it was predicted to be, the worst day of the Trump presidency. And Donald Trump knows it.
And the proof that Donald Trump knows that this has been the worst day of his presidency is that he did not tweet a word today. Not one tweet about anything. Not one word about James Comey who called the President of the United States a liar today. And while he was at it, James Comey called the White House spokespeople liars too.
COMEY: The administration then chose to defame me, and more importantly, the FBI, by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader. Those were lies, plain and simple. And I am so sorry that the FBI workforce had the hear them.
O'DONNELL: 'And I'm so sorry'...that moment the seething rage that you know the president is living with. Right now. You've seen enough of his behavior to know that when he is criticized by anyone, he needs to lash out on Twitter as fast as possible with a rage tweet aimed at that person. He has done to it me. He has done to it other people on this network. He has done it to other people we've never heard of until he attacked that person for criticizing him. He obviously needs, needs do it. He obviously gets a certain relief, a certain pleasure, perhaps, from viciously attacking his critics. But he is sitting there tonight in the White House, staring at that overused TV without having had that relief, that pleasure. How agonizing is that for him? For someone who fills with rage so easily to be able to release that rage is so important.
We've had reliable reports that the president explodes in rage at his staff inside the White House, sometimes even worse than his public explosions on Twitter. And that might be happening in the White House tonight. There is a report in The Daily Beast tonight that White House staff are all worried about a possible late night Twitter storm. Possibly during this hour. But not yet. Imagine how unsatisfactory that is for the man who so desperately needs and likes retweets of his rage. He hasn't been able to do that today. He needs to see on Twitter how many people share his rage. Can't do that now. So this, this is the darkest night in the Trump White House so far. We know this because we know the nature of the person living in the White House. We know how he deals with criticism. He has made that very public.
James Comey knew the nature of the person he was meeting before he met Donald Trump.
He knew that Donald Trump spent years lying about President Obama's birth certificate.
He knew that Donald Trump lied about seeing thousands of people celebrating the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey.
He knew that Donald Trump had told a string of lies about when he would release his tax returns.
He knew that Donald Trump lied about losing hundreds of friends on 9/11. He lost none, not one. He never went to a single 9/11 funeral. He lied about all of that.
James Comey knew that Donald Trump had defrauded the students of Trump University, lied to them about what Trump University was and what it would be for them. Lied to those students and took their money.
James Comey knew who he was meeting that day in Trump Tower on January 6th. And in his written testimony that was released yesterday, James Comey said I felt compelled to document my first conversation with the president-elect in a memo. Today James Comey explained exactly why he felt compelled to do that.
COMEY: I knew that there might come a day when I would need a record of what had happened not just to defend myself, but to defend the FBI and our integrity as an institution and the independence of our investigative function.
O'DONNELL: He knew there might come a day. That day has come... that day was today. He explained that he never took notes of his discussions with previous presidents, Obama and Bush, because he trusted them.
Why did James Comey think that there might come a day when he would need a record of what happened? Because he didn't trust Donald Trump.
He said it was a combination of things that made him decide to take notes. The circumstances, the subject matter, and third, the nature of the person. Here is what James Comey said about the nature of the person.
COMEY: ...And the nature of the person. I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting. So I thought it really important to document.
O'DONNELL: "The nature of the person." The nature of the person has been obvious for many years to anyone who has been listening to Donald Trump. I started calling him a liar on this program in 2011, as soon as he opened his mouth about President Obama's birth certificate. It took the rest of the news media to catch up and finally describe Trump's statements as lies. He is a proven liar. That is the nature of the person James Comey was about to meet. That's why James Comey was concerned that he might lie. Because James Comey had heard him lie many times before.fore. We all have. The world has. No one in public life has lied as much about as many things as Donald Trump.
And so not one Republican senator on the committee today tried to defend Donald Trump.
Not one of them said, "I don't believe Donald Trump would have asked for your loyalty."
Not one of them said "I don't believe Donald Trump would have asked you to stop the investigation of Michael Flynn.:
No one on that committee said today "I know Donald Trump, and Donald Trump would never do what you're saying he did. Donald Trump is an honorable man. Donald Trump would never say what you're saying he said." No one on that committee tried to say that.
One Republican senator tried to suggest that President Trump only expressed his hope, his hope to James Comey when he said "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go." James Comey did not take that as a hope. ....When Marco Rubio characterized it as an order, Comey agreed that it was an order. It could be characterized that way. James Comey didn't carry out that order or direction or hope or whatever you want to call it, and he was fired by the president, whose order, whose hope, he defied.
As reported on this program, President Trump was unable to hire an experienced Washington lawyer to defend him in this investigation. And so he is stuck with the same New York lawyer with no experience in Washington who has participated in Donald Trump's frivolous lawsuits against people who have criticized Donald Trump, and who has defended Donald Trump in the Trump University fraud case that cost Donald Trump $25 million. That lawyer, who has no idea at all how to defend a president in a situation like this that could lead to impeachment, that lawyer, made a terrible mistake, of ending the day today with a credibility contest between a proven public pathological liar and former director of the FBI James Comey.
