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Fox News Channel host Neil Cavuto called MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell a “condescending, sanctimonious twit” and a “horses ass” who is “lying” to his audience in his coverage of Ann Romney and her therapy for multiple sclerosis, a disease also afflicting Cavuto.
On Your World with Neil Cavuto on Wednesday night the host ripped into the competing news network for four straight minutes, a response to O’Donnell’s criticism of Romney’s use of horseback riding – in particular her participation in a sport known as “dressage” — as therapy for her MS.
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“There are a lot of things you can do to try to deal with MS, but, come on, dressage does not appear in any of the more traditional courses of treatment,” O’Donnell said recently on his show, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.
O’Donnell and others on MSNBC have been suggesting that GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, a multimillionaire, is out of touch with average Americans, and O’Donnell appeared to be using the candidate’s wife’s horse – which will compete with a different rider in the upcoming Olympics – as further evidence of his thesis.
“If it’s true that dressage is how wildly rich people deal with this very difficult personal health problem, they why, why, does the horse appear on Mitt Romney’s tax return as a business expense?” O’Donnell asked his viewers (video is below).
Cavuto, who was diagnosed with MS about 15 years ago, told his audience Wednesday that his condition means his comments might be taken “with a big grain of pity salt,” but he nevertheless laid into O’Donnell, though without mentioning his name (a FNC spokesperson confirmed the remarks were aimed primarily at O’Donnell).
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“I’ve had enough. Enough of condescending commentators,” Cavuto said before citing multiple scientific sources for the various known benefits of “hippotherapy,” a more therapeutic term for dressage.
“Just because you might find such therapies strange, trust me when I tell you, this disease it helps treat is a lot more strange and a lot more cruel. So, go ahead and have a good, stupid laugh over Ann and her horses,” Cavuto said. (Video is below).
“It seems odd to me that a network with the very letters ‘MS’ in its name wouldn’t resist making fun of someone who has to live with MS everyday… These guys taking potshots at Ann Romney are horses asses,” Cavuto said.
Cavuto used O’Donnell’s commentary to belittle MSNBC’s “lean forward” slogan and to accuse the network of “lying.”
“You don’t have to lean forward to appreciate it. Just check your facts before you joke about it because, right about now, you condescending, sanctimonious twits who are allegedly healthy — you have proven that you do not know the benefits of horseback riding one bit, but you sure are good at piling on the lies,” he said.
“Ask yourself this,” Cavuto said at the end of the segment, “if they’re that egregious and lying on that issue, what else are they lying about?”
MSNBC didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Email: paul.bond@thr.com
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