MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell Gets Emotional as he Praises Abdul El-Sayed

Lawrence O’Donnell got emotional as he heaped praise on Abdul El-Sayed on Wednesday (November 4), calling the Michigan Democrat’s election-victory speech “the movie ending we all grew up with.”

The MS NOW host reacted to several victory speeches on Wednesday night, following the blue tsunami that saw Democrats take control of both the House and the Senate. However, it was El-Sayed, who made history as the first Muslim U.S. senator, who left the strongest impression on O’Donnell.

“To all the parents who struggled to explain why the president openly mocked someone for their name or the way they pray, let them know tomorrow that the bad guys lost,” El-Sayed said, referring to Donald Trump‘s use of his middle name, Mohamed, when addressing him.

“The bad guys lost… so important,” O’Donnell said. “That was the movie ending we all grew up with: the bad guys lost. That was the way it was always supposed to end. The bad guys lost in the end.”

He added that sometimes you might “not know how long the movie turned out to be,” pointing to Richard Nixon winning the presidency in 1968 and his re-election in 1972 before he resigned over the Watergate scandal. “And then we knew once again that the bad guys lost in the end,” O’Donnell added.

“That wasn’t supposed to just be in the movies; that was supposed to be the American way,” he continued. “Then came Donald Trump.” O’Donnell noted Trump’s 2016 election win, his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, and his 2024 comeback “in a version of a movie we’ve never seen.”

“And so, for a 15-year-old boy in America listening to Sen.-elect El-Sayed last night, the idea that the bad guys lost is not that 15-year-old boy’s lived experience except in the movies,” O’Donnell said. “Especially if that little boy is in one of the communities in this country that Donald Trump viciously attacks on a daily basis.”

The veteran news anchor said that the belief that the bad guys lose in the end wavered in recent years. “That could be part of why people are struggling to, as they say, wrap their heads around it,” O’Donnell stated. “And then we heard a new senator say it: ‘The bad guys lost.'”

He then became choked up as he said, “And then we could feel it, the bad guys lost, and then we could know where we really are in this drama. Decency was on display in every winner’s victory speech, with each of them doing what Donald Trump has never done, saying something kind and generous about the candidate they were running against.”

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