Scarborough, O’Donnell Spar Over Trump Finances; Trump Responds with Year Salary Bet

Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” co-host Joe Scarborough and Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s evening program “The Last Word,” got into a heated debate over Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s salary for his NBC television show “Celebrity Apprentice.”

In his campaign’s financial statement submitted yesterday as part of his $10 billion in personal wealth, Trump listed his “Celebrity Apprentice” salary at just over $200 million annually which caused Scarborough to say, “So we hear a story of how incoherent Donald Trump is. What a buffoon Donald Trump is. What a blow-hard Donald Trump is. And if you look and see what his salary is from NBC from yesterday’s financial disclosures — over $200 million dollars.”

O’Donnell insisted Trump was lying saying, “It’s a complete total lie. That’s a lie. Let me explain something here. Donald Trump didn’t even make $1 million for his first year. NBC, the last time Trump said this is how much money, NBC was forced to release a statement saying he is lying. That’s what they said. When he said that he was making $130 million for two years of an NBC show which no one has made and especially in that nonsense category that he is in. He was a hired hand. He had no profit in the Mark Burnett show. That’s who gets the profit from that show. There is not much profit. TV is the rerun business, syndication business. Trump has been one of the lowest paid people to have an hour long show on NBC.”

After an extended argument Scarborough said, “Lawrence is proving why Donald Trump will continue to rise in the polls because he’s condescending, he’s isolated and he is so twisted up that he is saying the guy that has a prime time show on a major network is a sucker that makes no money.”

Later in an off-air phone call to “Morning Joe,” Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski detailed a mid-commercial phone call from Trump in which the GOP presidential hopeful challenged O’Donnell with a bet of a year’s salary that his financial disclosure was truthful.

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