Don’t expect the full name of Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) House subcommittee to be mentioned on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” anytime soon.
Host Lawrence O’Donnell said Thursday he won’t refer to the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government — which is supposed to probe GOP claims of FBI and Justice Department bias against conservatives — by its official title, because it’s “a lie.”
O’Donnell slammed the formation and naming of the committee by the “rabid, right-wing, election-denying, relentless, Trump-echoing Jim Jordan.”
“When you lie as much as Donald Trump and Jim Jordan, you are going to lie about the new House committee you create, and you are going to put the lie right there in the name of the committee,” the host said. “That’s why on this program I avoid in every way possible saying the name of that committee, because that is Jim Jordan trying to force me to use his words that are a lie in describing the work of that committee.”
“I don’t have that problem with any other congressional committee in history — because committee names were never a lie until now,” O’Donnell added.
O’Donnell cited the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s (D-N.Y.) concept of “semantic infiltration,” when “you force your opponent to use your language to describe something.”
“That’s why I never want to use the word Fox and the word News next to each other,” the MSNBC anchor added.
Watch the video here: