After an 11-minute-long Get Out the Vote (GOTV) effort for Democrats on Tuesday’s Hardball, MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews falsely claimed that anti-Kavanaugh protesters weren’t paid to physically corner and verbally harass Senators or try to break into the Supreme Court, comparing claims some of the mob was paid for to birtherism concerning Barack Obama.
If that wasn’t enough, cable news pleaser and faux Republican David Jolly hailed the leftist mob while suggesting that the Tea Party movement itself is violent.
Matthews played a clip of the President slamming the protesters but prefaced it by asserting that Trump doesn’t like when “people on the other side, especially women” “make their voices heard” for things he supported like the Kavanaugh confirmation.
After a mash-up of Republicans and Trump supporters calling out the left’s behavior as a mob, Matthews screeched that the right had delegitimized the protesters to being “outside agitators” and when he “looked at the protesters,” he saw “middle class people, a diverse background, but basically regular people.”
“There’s not — there wasn't any crazy people in the crowd. What's this thing about they haven't been paid yet? That's like birtherism. Trump just makes this stuff up, which everybody knows is lying. There's no evidence of anybody getting paid to protest here. This is — who’s he talking to that's buying this mouthwash,” he added, comparing the fact that some of the protesters were paid to conspiracy theories concerning Obama’s birthplace.
Before we get to the latest scintillating takes from the man who lost to chief political flip-flopper Charlie Crist, let’s look at the facts. Our friends Amber Athey, Peter Hasson, and Joe Simonson at the Daily Caller had been reporting since the first set of Kavanaugh hearings that activists backed by liberal financier George Soros were indeed being paid.
In fact, the woman who cornered Republican Senator Jeff Flake (AZ), before he caved to Democratic demands for an FBI probe of Kavanaugh, serves as the Center of Public Democracy’s executive director. And who funds that? Soros’s Open Society Foundation.
Further, my colleague Nick Fondacaro flagged down Vice News D.C. Bureau Chief Shawna Thomas letting slip on ABC’s This Week Sunday morning that people were paid: “And that moment with Jeff Flake on the Hill, we talked to one woman who worked for Ultraviolet who was paid. She helped steer people in the right ways to be able to confront senators[.]”
Whoops. And that doesn’t even touch the doxxing of U.S. Senators by a former aide to Barbara Boxer, Maggie Hassan, and Sheila Jackson Lee.
As for Jolly, here are his comments, making him seem like the perfect spokesman for the Bill Nelson for Senate campaign in Florida while dismissing some of the same people who voted him into office (i.e. the tea party) (click “expand”):
There's a couple important things here. The first is we can't overlook the fact that this President and many Republicans were far more forceful and swift in their condemnation over legitimate, legal protesters over the Kavanaugh confirmation than they ever were the racists and rioters in Charlottesville. Let’s not forget that memory. But then let’s also look at the fact that everyone of those quotes, when they talk about an angry, left mob, if you substituted left for right we're describing the tea party town halls in 2009, 2010, when members of Congress had to be escorted out by security. The reality is you have a lot of entitled empty suits who sit in the United States Senate who realize the American people control the Senate, the American people get to hold them accountable and when you see, frankly, words like Mitch McConnell suggesting this is a mob, I think it's going to overplay the hand. It’s wrong. It's showing a disdain to the American people. The American people — they’re going to realize they're being spoken down to by the likes of Mitch McConnell. That’s why the left’s energy is going to stay through November 6. I don’t think the energy on the right will.
Matthews agreed and ignored the hundreds of arrests and attempts to physically takeover the Supreme Court.
“Somebody should read the Constitution wherein it gives the right to the American people to petition Congress...[T]hat's a right, just like the second amendment, Mr. And Mrs. Gun owner. It's just like the Second Amendment. You ought to value that, too,” Matthews asserted before a commercial break.
To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on October 9, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s Hardball
November 9, 2018
7:11 p.m. EasternCHRIS MATTHEWS: President Trump weighed in on the hundreds of demonstrators that took to Capitol Hill to make their voices heard. He doesn't like that. He doesn't like people on the other side, especially women, opposing Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Here he is.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You know, a lot of those were paid protesters. You saw that. They were all unhappy because they haven't been paid yet. I've been calling it. They were paid protesters. That was professionals. That was orchestrated
MATTHEWS: Well, the President's Republican allies tried to channel their supporters’ outrage over protests into a winning issue by casting Democrats as an angry mob.
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER MITCH MCCONNELL: Reason and deliberation triumphed over what was literally, literally, an attempt to sway the senate using mob tactics. [SCREEN WIPE] The far left mob is not letting up.
SOUTH CAROLINA REPUBLICAN SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM [on FNC’s Hannity, 10/08/18]: If we legitimize this process, the rule of law gave away to the mob rule.
KAYLEIGH MCENANY [on FNC’s Fox & Friends]: There's simply no doubt the left's mob like tactics are backfiring.
STEVE BANNON [on The Laura Ingraham Show]: That behavior of those protesters was just unacceptable, and what happened afterwards, which was really kind of — you see the mob rule of what's coming.
MATTHEWS: Outside agitators. I'm sorry, David, outside agitators. I grew up with that, we all did. It's not the legitimate protests of the voices of the people, which those — I looked at the protesters. They tended to be middle class people, a diverse background, but basically regular people. There’s not — there wasn't any crazy people in the crowd. What's this thing about they haven't been paid yet? That's like birtherism. Trump just makes this stuff up, which everybody knows is lying. There's no evidence of anybody getting paid to protest here. This is — who’s he talking to that's buying this mouthwash?
DAVID JOLLY: There's a couple important things here. The first is we can't overlook the fact that this president and many Republicans were far more forceful and swift in their condemnation over legitimate, legal protesters over the Kavanaugh confirmation than they ever were the racists and rioters in Charlottesville. Let’s not forget that memory. But then let’s also look at the fact that everyone of those quotes, when they talk about an angry, left mob, if you substituted left for right we're describing the tea party town halls in 2009, 2010, when members of Congress had to be escorted out by security. The reality is you have a lot of entitled empty suits who sit in the United States Senate who realize the American people control the Senate, the American people get to hold them accountable and when you see, frankly, words like Mitch McConnell suggesting this is a mob, I think it's going to overplay the hand. It’s wrong. It's showing a disdain to the American people. The American people — they’re going to realize they're being spoken down to by the likes of Mitch McConnell. That’s why the left’s energy is going to stay through November 6. I don’t think the energy on the right will.
MATTHEWS: Somebody should read the Constitution wherein it gives the right to the American people to petition Congress — to petition Congress. To the very thing they're doing there. Petitioning Congress and that's a right, just like the second amendment, Mr. And Mrs. Gun owner. It's just like the Second Amendment. You ought to value that, too.
