Trump says – President Donald Trump told lawmakers in a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday that he “doesn’t care about the midterms,” a remark Lawrence O’Donnell said was an unprecedented confession about the stakes of the upcoming election. The comment came after Trump also fac
The Cabinet room was supposed to be the private work of government. Instead, President Donald Trump used the moment to talk—again—like he was performing.
During a Wednesday Cabinet meeting that Trump set up as if it were meant for an audience. Trump said he “doesn’t care about the midterms. ” telling the room that he expects opponents to “outwait” him until the election. “They thought they were going to outwait me, you know?” Trump said. “‘We’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms.’ I don’t care about the midterms.”.
Lawrence O’Donnell, on MS NOW’s “Last Word,” framed the line as more than casual politics. He said Trump was “the first president in history to say that he doesn’t care about the midterm elections. ” noting that no president has ever said it “even in private.” The point. O’Donnell argued. was made worse by the context Trump chose: the remark came in a setting O’Donnell described as supposed to be private. even as Trump invited the White House press corps to join the meeting.
O’Donnell said the meetings have effectively lost their original purpose since Trump took office. turning them into “the kind of cheap reality TV” he associates with Trump from “Apprentice.” In that environment. O’Donnell said officials don’t “speak freely” and end up spending the time praising Trump—an outcome he said has been visible “over the past year.”.
The remark didn’t land in a vacuum. O’Donnell said the question that prompted Trump’s comments centered on Trump’s ongoing war on Iran and the negotiations framed as an effort to end the conflict. O’Donnell connected the politics of the midterms directly to the human and economic costs of the Iran policy. pointing to at least 13 U.S. military service members killed and more than 3,000 Iranians dead. He also linked those losses to inflation pressures and warned that the public is feeling it at the pump.
Gas prices, O’Donnell said, are a central reason Republican lawmakers appear to be splitting with Trump. He argued that lawmakers in both chambers “do care about the midterm elections. ” and that they understand “nothing is hurting them more than Donald Trump’s war in Iran and the inflation it has caused in this country. especially skyrocketing costs of gasoline and diesel fuel.”.
O’Donnell then put a number to the public mood: he said “Eighty-three percent of voters say gas prices are going up a little or a lot,” and that “not a single person has said gas prices are going down a lot—except Donald Trump.”
Trump, O’Donnell added, used the same meeting to shift attention to domestic projects. He said Trump spent “nearly nine minutes” during the Cabinet session talking about plans to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington. D.C. while also fixating on an “exorbitant White House ballroom project.”.
For O’Donnell. the most jarring detail was how the meeting itself played out on video: he showed cabinet members praising Trump and highlighted remarks from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. who praised Trump’s “smart” war on Iran. In the clip O’Donnell described, Trump patted Hegseth while laughingly saying, “He loves war.”.
O’Donnell’s reaction was blunt. “The Cabinet room has never reeked of such stupidity and inhumanity before,” he said, adding that it never will again “after the Trump presidency.”
As the midterm election draws closer. the clash at the heart of O’Donnell’s reporting is clear in the order of the facts: a president telling the country he “doesn’t care” about the midterms. in a meeting he helped turn into spectacle. while the war with Iran—tied to deaths and fuel costs—sits at the center of voters’ concerns.
United States politics Donald Trump midterm elections Cabinet meeting Lawrence O’Donnell MS NOW war on Iran gas prices Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Pete Hegseth White House press corps