“It f**king sucks to be out here with this out of control s**t,” Lawrence O’Donnell said, summing up what appears to have been a very frustrating day of taping his show last month. Mediaite reports the leaked 8-minute segment of O’Donnell having a series of escalating meltdowns was all recorded on one day, August 29, 2017:

The video, which lasts a full eight minutes, is a collection of clips from one evening (given O’Donnell’s consistent outfit) and show the MSNBC anchor fuming about earpiece malfunctions, blasting off obscenities and screaming at his staff. We were able to link it back to the August 29 show.

The best part of this clip is the way it builds. You first see just a flash of anger in O’Donnell’s face as he reacts to someone in the control booth talking in his ear. A producer keeps giving him a countdown for the end of the commercial break and O’Donnell mutters, “God damn it.” Seconds before he is to go on air again, he raises his hands and grimaces in frustration. But there’s no time to say anything else. He straightens his jacket and returns to coolly bashing President Trump.

In the next break, O’Donnell once again raises his hands in mute frustration. He looks angry now and it seems to be a real struggle for him to recover his calm demeanor this time. There’s a jump in the tape and during the next break a producer comes up behind O’Donnell and attempts to examine his earpiece. “Don’t. Leave it there,” O’Donnell snaps. “It’s not my earpiece it’s somebody talking on our lines,” he adds. The producer quickly slinks off camera.

The highlight of the clip occurs as O’Donnell hears someone hammering in the distance. “Stop the hammering! Stop the hammering out there. Who’s got a hammer,” he says standing up from his chair. O’Donnell continues, “Where is it?! Where’s the hammer?! Go up on the other floor. Somebody go up there and stop the hammering! STOP THE HAMMERING!

“I’ll go down to the goddamn floor myself and stop it. Keep the goddamn commercial break going. Call f**king Phil Griffin. I don’t care who the f**k you have to call, stop the hammering! Empty out the goddamn control room and find out where this is going on…The woman talking in my ear was talking about the labor day special, repeatedly…” As an assistant handed him pages of material, O’Donnell muttered, “F**king out of control s**t.”

Moments later O’Donnell is complaining about “SOTs” which is TV speak for sound on tape. He mutters about how the SOTs are written and having to “chase those stupid goddamn entrails that you allowed him to stick out there.” “Jesus,” O’Donnell says as he slams a pen to the floor. “Crazy f**king sound coming in my ear, this f**kin stupid hammering…It just f**king sucks to be out here with this out of control s**t.”

Lawrence has always been a hot head. There have been several incidents where he lost his composure on air over the years. He even challenged Mitt Romney’s son to a fight. So it’s not surprising the same thing happens off the air as well. The fact that this tape apparently leaked suggests some of the people on his staff are sick of working for a rage-a-holic. I wonder what they’ll decide to leak next. Here’s the full clip. As you can see above it is very NSFW:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFfg1IxscuY

If you don’t have 8-minutes for that, there’s already a mashup featuring Bill O’Reilly and MC Hammer and it’s pretty good:

Well, I mashed up Lawrence O'Donnell and Bill O'Reilly because it just had to be done https://t.co/9LLxb1sOIy pic.twitter.com/eSpox7gbhI

— David Rutz (@DavidRutz) September 20, 2017