In a sympathetic interview by Isaac Chotiner at Slate.com, Rachel Maddow gushed all over Chris Matthews, about how he’s this “kinetic guy who’s very different than everyone elseo n TV, but that apparently is the Kryptonite for interviewing Trump.” He was “born to interview Donald Trump.”
A more cynical person might read this as corporate cheerleading with a bit of rivalry thrown in since Maddow says Matthews is so “kinetic” he “interrrupts himself,” and says he beats Trump because he has “the same bluster.”
SLATE: I think that your colleague Chris Matthews did a really great interview with Trump. Matthews isn't easily diverted.
MADDOW: I could not agree with you more. I love Chris Matthews, but this is not just me trying to be nice to him. I feel like he was born to interview Donald Trump. The thing about Chris that I think people give him a hard time for is that he interrupts as part of his speaking style and as part of his interview style. Literally: When I say as part of his speaking style, I mean he interrupts himself. He's a guy who is completely willing to jump in not just at a time when other people might hold back, but jump in repeatedly as a way of turning the conversation into a constructive place when it has stalled or when he can predict where you're going.
That impatience on his part makes him seem like this kinetic guy who's very different than everybody else on TV, but that apparently is the Kryptonite for interviewing Trump. I want Chris Matthews to get every Donald Trump interview that the media is going to get over the next five weeks because finally there's somebody who's the same vintage, [has] the same bluster.
SLATE: Pathological liars should all go to Chris Matthews for interviews.
MADDOW: I fantasize about being able to interview Trump. Who knows if I ever will be?
So if all liars should be exposed by Matthews, how does Slate explain Matthews sympathetically asking Hillary “hardballs” like how Sanders is unfairly promising too much to the liberal base?
MATTHEWS: How do you beat a person who’s coming along in the primaries, however, who’s saying, I'm going to give you all the things you want: free tuition, more Social Security benefits without any increase in your taxes, health care from birth to death, all the government paid, how do you compete with a revolution, a revolution of promises really?
Slate did eventually turn to trashing Megyn Kelly, but Maddow pulled out one of those “I don’t watch my rivals” baloney, just like Obama in 2012 claiming he never watched Republican primary debates. (Sure. You. Don’t.) Not even her Slate buddy is buying it:
SLATE: What do you make of Megyn Kelly being held up as this exemplar of good journalism? It's a weird turn of events for anyone who regularly watches her race-baiting show.
MADDOW: [Laughs.] It is an accident of our schedules that I have never seen Megyn Kelly's shows because I have this thing that I'm busy doing every night at the same time her show is on, so I feel like I can't substantively comment on it.
SLATE: We have DVR now.
MADDOW: Actually I don't have a DVR. I do have a TV now, but I don't have the recording capacity.
As if Maddow couldn’t watch Kelly clips all over the Internet. Instead, she pleads that she’s a cavewoman that has never figure out those newfangled TiVo thingies. Speaking of avoiding the hard issues, Maddow played the same game of claiming there’s great “editorial independence” at MSNBC...which somehow translates into not criticizing any other host at MSNBC for being Trump lackeys (ahem, Joe and Mika):
MADDOW: It would never occur to me to criticize the way that some other show on this network was covering Trump because it’s not my job to, and like I said, I don’t even necessarily watch. I am just doing my own thing. [Laughs.] You’d think it [would] feel like we’re all in high school together, so we’d all be gossiping about each other and working together and going to homeroom at the same time, but really we all have our own lanes. I know that’s depressing. Sorry.
She also avoided any (unsubtle) critique of the MSNBC v. Harris-Perry debacle:
SLATE: Do you have a sense of what happened to Melissa Harris-Perry?
MADDOW: No, I don’t. I don’t.
SLATE: You haven’t talked to her?
MADDOW: No, I haven’t. I haven’t talked to executives here about it. I love Melissa, and I have followed it in the press, but she left and she hasn’t been in touch. She left under circumstances that are as clear to you as they are to me. I don’t have any inside knowledge, I should say.
Maddow was much more willing to trash talk when it came to the Trump stumbling over whether or not women should be punished for seeking abortions:
SLATE: Many pro-life people who say abortion is murder don’t want women to be penalized for it. There’s something hypocritical and intellectually incoherent in my mind about that position, but people are hypocritical.
MADDOW: Yeah. The thing that sort of put me over the edge is when Ted Cruz put out a sanctimonious statement criticizing Donald Trump for his draconian position on abortion, and it was like hold on, wait a minute. The fact that Ted Cruz is able to get away with this without people spitting coffee out of their noses all over the country and every newsroom in the country rushing to air with how ridiculous that was shows you that the Trump comments are not being adequately explained. They don’t just need to be shown. They need to be explained.
Slate wasn’t going to ask Maddow about the polar opposite...that she’s never asked Obama or Hillary Clinton about how ridiculous it sounds when abortion advocates refuse to acknowledge a birth has occurred in a partial-birth abortion (or even a “live-birth abortion,” when they try to follow the “pro-choice” logic into pushing “demise” after birth, or Gosnell slit-the-neck territory.)
