He's at it again.
On his March 5 Hardball program in a segment with Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) about the 50th anniversary of the Selma march for voting rights, Hardball host Chris Matthews slammed as racially-motived GOP efforts for establishing voter ID laws.
Seconds after Benjamin Netanyahu ended his speech on Tuesday to Congress, the journalists at MSNBC began attacking it. Chris Matthews appeared and sneered that the Israeli prime minister "never mentioned the real world" in his address. The Hardball host insisted that Iraq was "the war [Netanyahu] talked us into." The journalist berated, "The reason Baghdad is under control of the Shia and under the control of Iran is he pushed that! And he never mentioned that! So, being a hawk all the time takes away some of your credibility, always being a hawk."
Say "1964," and those of us old enough might think of the appearance on Ed Sullivan's show of some little British group called the Beatles. But Chris Matthews recalls something else: the Republican party's decision to nominate Mr. Conservative, Barry Goldwater, and his ensuing wipeout by LBJ.
On his MSNBC show tonight, Matthews suggested that Republicans are in a similarly reckless mood, and might well nominate a true conservative, electoral consequences be damned. And, oh yeah, Chris contended that the GOP would do so out of racist motives.
Informing Hardball viewers of something host Chris Matthews would never tell them, moderately-conservative columnist Kathleen Parker on Monday gave some much-needed context to why Speaker John Boehner did not extensively consult with the White House prior to inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address the Congress.
In this week of the CPAC straw poll, the kiss of death for a Republican hopeful might be to say "endorsed by Chris Matthews."
But that dubious honor has been bestowed on Jeb Bush. On this evening's Hardball, Matthews declared that Jeb would be "the Hillary people's worst nightmare, if he runs, because if he wins the nomination the middle is in play." So Bush would be formidable because he's a moderate? Stop, Chris, you're killing Jeb!
According to Chris Matthews, the modern GOP would throw out the party's pro-civil rights members from the 1960s. Talking to former Lyndon Johnson aide Joseph Califano on Tuesday, Matthews appeared amazed by the fact that the 1964 Civil Rights Act "passed with four out of five Republicans." He sneered, "People don't believe the Republican Party" of today is the same.
In case he's been too subtle in the past, an unhinged Chris Matthews made himself clear on Monday: He thinks the Republicans "hate" Barack Obama. The Hardball anchor fumed over insufficient outrage at Rudy Giuliani's assertion that Obama doesn't "love America." In the span of one show, he hit Republicans as "haters" seven times.
An outraged Chris Matthews on Thursday railed against Rudy Giuliani's assertion that Barack Obama doesn't "love America." The cable anchor assailed the idea that anyone's patriotism would be questioned. An odd assertion from an MSNBC host as they do it quite often. A wounded Matthews howled, "They're saying [Obama] doesn't love America!"
Railing against Speaker Boehner's decision to invite Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress on his concerns about Iran, Hardball host Chris Matthews sneered that the Ohio Republican essentially attempted to "sneak" the Israeli Prime Minister into the country with the president completely unawares, and that all to curry favor with "crazy right-wing" evangelical Christians.
But of course the facts conflict with Matthews's simplistic narrative.
If once is an MSNBC aberration, is twice is a trend? Earlier today we reported on Ed Schultz getting surprisingly angry over the Obama administration's weakness in confronting ISIS, calling the situation a "religious war."
Just two hours later, Chris Matthews sounded a similar alarm, saying "if I were ISIS I wouldn't be afraid . . . the American people are getting humiliated . . . it sounds like we can't stop it." Have we reached a watershed moment among normally dutiful MSM supporters of President Obama?
For seven straight shows in January of 2014, MSNBC's Chris Matthews hyperbolically compared Chris Christie's Bridgegate scandal to Watergate (with the Republican governor as the new Richard Nixon). The Hardball anchor on Friday took a victory lap while talking about Christie fading as a 2016 contender. Matthews trumpeted, " Well, does Chris Christie still have a path or a prayer to the presidency?"
Chris Matthews on Thursday snarled that the Republican Party has rejected Abraham Lincoln and become the home to racists. The Hardball anchor equated voter ID laws with bigotry, sneering that "you would think" that "no political party would want to be seen putting up obstacles to voting, that no party would want to be seen as the declared enemy of a large voting group."