Lawrence O’Donnell revived a phrase that has long irked Donald Trump: “short-fingered vulgarian.”
The MS NOW anchor said that the president proved that the moniker, first used by Spy Magazine in 1988, still applies when Trump, 79, flipped off a Detroit auto worker who called him a “pedophile protector” on Tuesday.
“Against his much larger body, the finger he raised yesterday looks even smaller,” O’Donnell said on The Last Word, before contrasting the president’s “childish public performance of Trumpian vulgarity” with how his predecessors responded when confronted by critics.
“Presidents throughout history have been yelled at, shot at. They’ve been called murderers and war criminals to their faces. They’ve had their sleep disrupted by protesters outside the White House at night. They’ve had shoes thrown at them,” O’Donnell, 74, noted. “Not one of those presidents gave anyone the finger.”
“And in giving that little finger yesterday, Donald Trump created a national hero who takes his place in history, now with more dignity than Donald Trump has ever mustered,” the host continued.
The recipient of Trump’s one-finger salute, 40-year-old union employee TJ Sabula, was suspended after he called the president a “pedophile protector” during Trump’s visit to a Michigan Ford factory. Sabula told The Washington Post that he has “no regrets whatsoever” over the incident. Two GoFundMe campaigns for him raised over $800,000 before he closed donations and encouraged people to donate their money elsewhere.
In needling Trump, 79, about his fingers, O’Donnell is hitting the “vulgarian in chief” on a topic about which the MAGA leader has a long history of emotionally reacting to.
During the 2016 GOP primary, O’Donnell reminded viewers, Trump couldn’t resist responding to rival candidate Marco Rubio’s suggestion that his hand size meant that another part of his anatomy was small: “I guarantee you there’s no problem,” Trump rebutted.
And ever since Spy Magazine’s Graydon Carter called the real estate mogul a “short-fingered vulgarian” nearly four decades ago, Trump can’t let it go, according to Carter.
“He’ll send me pictures, tear sheets from magazines, and he did it as recently as [last] April,” Carter told NPR about the president in 2016. “With a gold Sharpie, he’ll circle his fingers and in his handwriting say, ‘See, not so short.’”
Carter added: “And this April when he sent me one, I just — I should have held on to the thing, but I sent it right back by messenger with a note, a card — stapled to the top, saying, ‘Actually, quite short.’ And I know it just gives him absolute fits. And now that it’s become sort of part of the whole campaign rhetoric, I’m sure he wants to just kill me — with those little hands.”
When reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung didn’t directly address O’Donnell’s monologue, instead repeating a defense of Trump’s actions toward Sabula: “A lunatic was wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage, and the President gave an appropriate and unambiguous response.”
