MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell said Wednesday that a reference to President Obama's golfing in Sen. Mitch McConnell's upcoming RNC speech is an attempt to link the president to Tiger Woods and his "lifestyle":
MARTIN BASHIR: We have seen an early draft of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's forthcoming oration. Can I quote something from you? "For four years, Barack Obama has been running from the nation's problems, he hasn't been working to earn re-election. He has been working to earn a spot on the PGA Tour." How about that?
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Well, we know exactly what he's trying to do there. He is trying to align to Tiger Woods and surely, the -- lifestyle of Tiger Woods with Barack Obama. Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth. They find every way they possibly can to --
BASHIR: Lawrence -- don't you think -- don't you think that what he's really trying to do is to suggest that the president is not paying attention to the central issues that come with the responsibility he has? Is he really – Mitch McConnell really making a connection with Tiger Woods who, of course, has become infamous for chasing various cocktail waitresses around Las Vegas and so on?
O’DONNELL: Martin, there are many, many, many rhetorical choices you can make at any point in any speech to make whatever point up want to make. If he wanted to make the point that you just suggested and I think he does want to make that point, they had a menu of a minimum of ten different kinds of images that they could have raised. And I promise you, the speech writers went through, rejecting three or four before they land order that one. That's the one they want for a very deliberate reason. That -- there's -- these people reach for every single possible racial double entendre they can find in every one of these speeches.
BASHIR: You really believe that about Mitch McConnell?
O’DONNELL: I know these people are insensitive. I know the speechwriters are insensitive. I know the way they work. They do not have the same sensitivity level that other speechwriters do. But when you get to the Tiger Woods reference, there were people in the speech writing room, I know this, without a shadow of a doubt, who said wait a minute, do we really want to go there? Do we really want to go to Tiger Woods and the vote in the room was yes, we do. Mitch McConnell agreed to do it.
BASHIR: Wow. Things are getting lower and lower by the day.