Veteran news anchor Lawrence O’Donnell caught on camera having screaming meltdown on set

There was insanity in Lawrence O’Donnell’s control room last month.

The MSNBC host lost his cool during breaks, slamming his fists on a desk and repeating profanities. He was upset that someone kept talking in his earpiece about something unrelated to the show he was taping. He didn’t like hammering sounds he could hear somewhere near the studio.

“Jesus Christ. Crazy f****** sound coming in my ear,” Mr O’Donnell says during one of the breaks, according to a video obtained by Mediaite.

“Any f****** thing can come into my ear at any moment. That’s what I know,” he says in a later portion of the show. “Anybody can get into my f****** ear at any time. Some woman [is] talking about what we’re doing after the show.”

Mr O’Donnell’s tirade reportedly occurred late last month, after Hurricane Harvey ravaged southeastern Texas. In one of the clips, he lashes out at his crew for failing to cut portions of an interview from their prepared videos.

“These f****** things,” Mr O’Donnell said. “There’s a reason these words have to be cut precisely. And, everyone in the audience who is going to complain about what that guy just said is completely right.”

Mr O’Donnell later apologized for the tirade on Twitter.

“A better anchorman and a better person would’ve had a better reaction to technical difficulties,” Mr O’Donnell wrote.

He’s not the first anchor to lose his cool while filming. The most infamous example, perhaps, would be former Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly. “F*** it, we’ll do it live,” Mr O’Reilly was filmed screaming while taping his show.