Matthews: Rudy 'A Little Bit of a Fascist?'

February 5th, 2007 5:46 PM

There's nothing like the day an Italian-American Republican moves toward announcing his presidential candidacy for musing as to whether he might have a whiff of fascism about him. As reported here, Rudy Giuliani inched closer to running for president today by filing a so-called "statement of candidacy" with the Federal Election Commission, indicating that he would seek the presidency as a Republican should he decide to go forward.

Chris Matthews had Rudy supporter and former congresswoman Susan Molinari as a guest on this afternoon's Hardball. In the course of discussing the way in which Rudy managed to clean up NYC, Matthews and Molinari had the following exchange:

Matthews: "He got the pee smell out of the phone booths in New York. Even phone booths that aren't booths, they're just a place to make a phone call, had that smell about them before. I think I've been to New York enough times -- he did clean up that atmosphere in New York."

Molinari: "You bet he did. He stopped making excuses for people. . . "

Matthews, interrupting: "Was he a little bit of a Fascist?"

View video here.

Contact Mark at mark@gunhill.net