Chris Matthews

Chris Matthews (b. 1945) is a TV News anchor, a talking head flannelmouth, and host of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews and NBC's The Chris Matthews Show. Hardball was originally presented as the quasi-liberal counter to such shows as Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor. In promotions before the show aired, his connections to the Democratic party were hyped, but the minute he opened his mouth, it was apparent he was left...compared to O'Reilly or Rush). As in, generally right-of-center in many of his comments and views. He dramatically retired from Hardball by walking off the program on March 2, 2020, leaving a shocked Steve Kornacki to take over and finish the hour-long show. He had been recently accused of sexual harassment and sexual bias by a reporter in an article in GQ magazine.

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Pundits
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v - t - e

Hardball

Hardball with Chris Matthews, a daily talking-heads panel "news"[note 1] show, first aired on America's Talking[note 2] as Politics with Chris Matthews in 1994[note 3]. Its content (and obviously, title) is supposedly based on Matthews' 1988 book, Hardball: How Politics is Played, Told By One Who Knows the Game. Matthews frequently gets his view across by interrupting and talking over his guests.

Recurring guests on Hardball have included:

A sad, notable moment: Hardball was one of the first shows to give Michele Bachmann a forum for her opinions. In effect Hardball was responsible for launching her political career. When on October 17, 2008 she was asked how many people she believed were "Anti-American", she replied:

“”"What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating exposé and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an exposé like that."

Matthews said nothing about the very unAmerican position she held, advocating that the media investigate our government to insure that they are "thinking right". And history showed that while this offended the left, it was the single comment that made Bachmann's ascension to the new "Right Wing Darling".

Controversies

Sometimes it's best to just let the pundit speak for himself...

Hillary Clinton
“”I'll be brutal, the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win there on her merit.
—January 9, 2008 on MSNBC's Morning Joe

Obama
“”You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.
—part of his State of the Union coverage, January 22, 2010.
“”“I felt this thrill going up my leg!”
—on Obama's style of speaking, quoted from Huffington Post on February 28, 2008

Islam
“”Every school in the Arab world will be a madrass school.
“”Five years from now, 10 years from now, there's going to be a huge Islamic population in the world, they're going to be nationalistic, they're going to be religious, and they're going to be militant.

Hurricane Sandy
“”I'm so glad we had that storm last week because I think the storm was one of those things..

He drew fire from conservatives. Matthews denied he was talking about the storm's destruction[1] and later tried clarifying, saying "I was thrilled at the cooperation between the President and state officials that made the country proud. Great bipartisanship."[2]

Bernie Sanders

He has utilized his overwhelmingly large brain to produce prophecies such as predicting Bernie Sanders “will lose 49 states”[3]. He has also started being reactionary in advance, claiming there would be mass executions in Central Park if Bernie won and that he would be amongst those killed. [4]

Which begs the questions... Who the fuck does he think he is? And... what the hell has he been up to?

In early 2020, Matthews red-baited Sanders' campaign, going as far as comparing his win in Nevada to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.[note 5] Yeah, Hitler totally was a socialist. This drew ire from Jewish groups, demanding that Matthews resign from his show on MSNBC.[5] He was forced to apologize for this statement, which he did several days later.

Lightning rod

As you may have noticed Matthews has, at times, been more of a detriment to liberal causes than an aid to them. This is mainly because his stupid comments end up giving ammunition to wingnuts and feed their already severe persecution complex. Certain pundits will often conflate Matthews with liberals in order to generalize them and knock them down. Though Matthews is definitely a Democrat, he has described himself as being fairly conservative, to the point where he voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and earned the scorn of Media Matters for praising Bush repeatedly in 2005.[6] He has generally been more liberal since then but described himself as a "centrist" in 2012. He also strongly supported both the Iraq War and the Keystone XL pipeline. However, this probably won't stop right-wing pundits from using him to bash liberals over the head, since most of their audience probably thinks anyone to the left of Newt Gingrich is a liberal.

Notes
  1. Matthews' news is usually presented with somewhat of a liberal slant but his guests come from across the political spectrum
  2. MSNBC's short-lived ancestor
  3. it's the only surviving show of that network
  4. Ok, so she's a news anchor in her own right, but still
  5. Keep in mind Sanders had several relatives killed in the Holocaust
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References
  1. Matthews, C. (November 7, 2012). "Obviously I wasn't talking about the horror of the storm. I grew up on the Jersey shore." Twitter. Retrieved November 7, 2018.
  2. Matthews, C. (November 7, 2012). "To clarify - I was thrilled at the cooperation between the President and state officials that made the country proud. Great bipartisanship." Twitter. Retrieved November 7, 2018.
  3. Haynes, T. (February 2020)“Chris Matthews: Bernie Sanders Is "Full Of It," Would Lose 49 States To Trump Like McGovern In 1972”
  4. Fearnow, B. (February 2020) “MSNBC HOST CHRIS MATTHEWS TIES BERNIE SANDERS TO FEARS OF SOCIALIST 'EXECUTIONS IN CENTRAL PARK,' FIDEL CASTRO”
  5. https://www.newsweek.com/chris-matthews-sanders-nazi-france-1488613
  6. http://mediamatters.org/research/2005/12/23/chris-matthews-2005s-misinformer-of-the-year/134530
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