MS NOW host Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday praised one senior MAGA official for “defying” President Donald Trump and his purported rationale for the Iran war — before skewering her over one egregious claim that O’Donnell condemned as “perjury.”

“There was obviously no imminent threat to the United States coming from Iran that justified Donald Trump starting a war,” said O’Donnell, citing Tuesday’s resignation letter from Joe Kent, the now-former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

O’Donnell dedicated the rest of his “Last Word” monologue to Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who testified Wednesday in prepared remarks for the Senate Intelligence Committee that U.S. strikes in June had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Gabbard was merely echoing Trump’s own claims about the “Operation Midnight Hammer” strikes last year, which appeared to end hostilities before he accused Iran of rebuilding their facilities and took America to war in February over these “imminent threats.”

“It would have been so easy for Tulsi Gabbard to say, ‘I agree with the president’s judgment that there was an imminent threat,’” O’Donnell noted Wednesday. “She refused to do that, refused to tell that lie for Donald Trump.”

He added, “And in refusing to do that, she is actually defying Donald Trump, not protecting Donald Trump. And of course, she is also lying when she said that the only person who can determine what is and isn’t an imminent threat is the president. That is simply perjury.”

Gabbard said as much during her testimony Wednesday.

When asked by Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) if the intelligence community had made the same assessment as Trump that Iran posed an “imminent nuclear threat,” Gabbard said, “Senator, the only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president.”

Ossoff reminded Gabbard that she had testified that the U.S. “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities and that Iran made “no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment,” before asking if the intelligence community had still assessed Iran was an “imminent threat.”

“It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” said Gabbard, the highest-ranking intelligence official in the United States. “That is up to the president based on a volume of information that he receives.”

O’Donnell expressed frustration after playing various clips of her testimony.

“In the written version of Tulsi Gabbard’s opening statement to the committee, she said, ‘As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated. There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capabilities,’” he said.

O’Donnell continued, “So that was Tulsi Gabbard saying of course Iran had no nuclear capability whatsoever when Donald Trump launched his war, but for some reason she left that line out of her opening statement when she spoke her statement to the committee.”

When asked Wednesday if she omitted that part because Trump recently reiterated his claim of an “imminent threat,” Gabbard said she “skipped through some of the portions” of her oral remarks — because “the time was running long.”

Watch the full “Last Word” segment on MS NOW’s YouTube account.

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