MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell was entirely justified in his viral off-camera meltdown, the Washington Free Beacon can exclusively report.

Mediaite posted eight minutes of footage Wednesday of a furious O'Donnell berating his production team on "The Last Word" Aug. 29 over a strange woman's voice in his earpiece and later some loud "hammering" going on nearby.

The clips quickly went viral; the Free Beacon mashed it up with a certain former Fox News host who also once blew up after some technical problems.

Now, the Free Beacon has obtained exclusive audio of what O'Donnell had to endure in his earpiece that night: an unidentified, elderly woman giving a painful list of excuses for why she lost some contest.

While the MSNBC host was already understandably annoyed to hear such self-pitying claptrap, he became even more frustrated when a jackhammer in a nearby studio made it almost impossible for him to be heard.

O'Donnell apologized for the edited footage you saw, but watch and listen to the above video and the context will show he has nothing to be sorry about.