Scott Jennings Fires Back at ‘Lunatic’ Lawrence O’Donnell as Feud Escalates

Martin Holmes October 31, 2025, 9:04 am

Scott Jennings and Lawrence O'Donnell — CNN YouTube; MSNBC YouTube

What To Know

Scott Jennings criticized MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on his podcast, calling him “irrelevant” and a “lunatic” after O’Donnell accused Jennings of lying about Donald Trump on air.
Jennings disputed O’Donnell’s claims about television ratings, asserting that CNN’s Abby Phillip outperformed O’Donnell in the key 25-54 demographic.
The conservative commentator dismissed O’Donnell as a “failed media personality,” mocking him for dedicating airtime to criticizing competitors.

CNN’s conservative commentator Scott Jennings took time out of his podcast on Wednesday (October 29) to discuss the “irrelevant” Lawrence O’Donnell, following the MSNBC anchor’s on-air criticism on Monday night (October 27).

“There’s this lunatic on MSNBC at 10 o’clock every night named Lawrence O’Donnell. I had sort of forgotten that he was a thing, but I guess he still has a show, and he went crazy on yours truly the other night,” the CNN NewsNight panelist said on the latest episode of The Scott Jennings Radio Show.

Jennings was referring to Monday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Last Word, in which O’Donnell called out CNN CEO Mark Thompson for “paying Scott Jennings to lie about Donald Trump.” O’Donnell slammed his 10 pm competition, NewsNight with Abby Phillip, stating, “The show that Scott Jennings frequents the most is on opposite this program. And that show on a good night gets half of the audience of this show.”

After playing a clip of O’Donnell’s comments, Jennings took offense to being called a liar. “Someone at MSNBC is accusing someone else of lying?” he said. “From that propaganda outfit over there? They’re accusing me or anyone else of lying? Outrageous.”

There’s this irrelevant lunatic on MSNBC named Lawrence O’Donnell. I actually forgot he existed.

But apparently, my existence caused him to have a mental breakdown live on the air.

I think I’ve figured out why he’s so upset 👇 pic.twitter.com/GyRmeyMW9X

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) October 29, 2025

He went on to describe O’Donnell’s “real problem,” explaining, “He’s irrelevant, nobody likes his show.” Jennings seemingly disputed the MSNBC anchor’s claims about the ratings, instead sharing his own research, claiming “Abby Phillip was kicking his rear end by 30 per cent on a nightly basis” in the key Adults 25-54 demo.

Looking at the latest available Nielsen ratings, Monday’s episode of CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip averaged 178,000 viewers in the key demo compared to O’Donnell’s 150,000. However, on Friday, October 24, O’Donnell’s demo numbers were 272,000, compared to Phillip’s 227,000.

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The Last Word was also higher in total viewers, averaging 2.089 million for last Friday’s episode, compared to NewsNight‘s 900,000, and 1.779 million for this Monday’s episode, compared to NewsNight’s 685,000.

On his podcast, Jennings blasted O’Donnell for dedicating time on his show to talk about him. “Can you imagine having a television show on a network and you spend your precious time on that network complaining about what someone else is doing on another network?” he asked.

“He’s a failed media personality,” Jennings continued, stating that “nobody cares what he thinks” and that “his show is failing.”

“Abby Phillip and CNN are kicking his rear end on a nightly basis, and so he goes on TV under all this pressure and has a psychotic episode and starts complaining about Mark Thompson and me,” Jennings concluded before adding a direct response to O’Donnell, “You’re a failure.”