MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Suggests Gen. John Kelly Is Racist ... Because He's an Irish Catholic

On Friday morning, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell suggested Gen. John Kelly was racist — because he grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. He attacked Kelly after the general responded to Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), the congresswoman notorious for speaking about President Donald Trump’s Gold Star call, on Thursday. O’Donnell’s own racism seemed monstrously apparent, as he demonized Kelly’s “white neighborhood.”

“John Kelly never sat beside a student like Frederica Wilson in his elementary. The language about black people in John Kelly’s white neighborhood was exactly the same language about black people that was used at the time in white communities in the segregated south,” O’Donnell said.

Hilariously, the MSNBC host echoed Wilson’s suggestion that “empty barrel” — a phrase Kelly used to characterize the congresswoman — was a racist slur. Of Kelly’s neighborhood, he said, “It was a neighborhood in which calling someone who looked like Frederica Wilson an empty barrel was the kindest thing that would have been said about her.”

O’Donnell also scoffed at the idea that women were considered “sacred” in the past. “You know what wasn’t sacred when [Kelly] was a kid growing up where he was growing up? Black women or black people. And, oh by the way, women were not sacred either. They were not honored,” he said.

Then came this: “John Kelly’s neighborhood in the Catholic parish where he grew up and I grew up, women were beaten by their husbands, drunken husbands as a normal weekly occurrence. And their parish priest would tell those women, you can’t get divorced, or you’ll be excommunicated.”

So O’Donnell dismissed Kelly as racist — suggesting “empty barrel” is a racist slur — because he is an Irish Catholic. A bit ironic, no?

Click “Load More” to see Tucker Carlson’s response, and to learn where “empty barrel” really comes from.

In his remarks about Rep. Frederica Wilson, Kelly said “empty barrels make the most noise.” As The Daily Caller’s David Sivak reported, the phrase is attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato (without concrete evidence), and variations of it appeared in the works of William Shakespeare and William Blake.

The suggestion that the phrase is racist is ludicrous, and it seems based on the Left’s tactic of attributing any disagreement with their agenda to race-based animus.

But don’t take my word for it, watch Tucker Carlson’s segment about it below.