MSNBC viewers were treated to two hours of Hardball Wednesday night following Donald Trump being anointed the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and while previewing the believed match-up of Trump and Hillary Clinton, host Chris Matthews and a guest mocked Hillary Clinton scandals as “garbage” and conservatives invoking the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi as deranged.
Leading into Matthew and Colleen McCain Nelson of The Wall Street Journal gloating about the supposedly boring Clinton scandals, liberal activist Maria Teresa Kumar noted how Trump won’t have much luck in attacking Hillary Clinton like he did his Republican opponents because there’s not “much he can say that the majority of Americans don't already know about Hillary Clinton.”
Matthews tried to make his points as he laughed incessantly to show how worthless he believes Clinton scandals to be, including Whitewater:
Well, no. There’s a lot of people are 18 years old that haven't heard this garbage. Right? There are people born free of knowing about Whitewater and Vince Foster and all this crud. He just brings it all back and says, this is all new stuff to think about.
Nelson seized on that thinking and mocked the notion that it ever mattered to the American people: “But is Whitewater the more interesting the second time around? I mean, the first time around, we didn't — most — the average voter didn't know what Whitewater was, so is it more compelling the second time?”
Parodying conservatives as deranged folks, Matthews played a caricature of one as he suggested that if one shouts “e-mails” or “Benghazi a million times,” more people will become outraged at Clinton.
Earlier in the show, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd couldn’t help but take one last shot at Ted Cruz for sending the tone of the campaign “off the rails” for simply defending his father against Trump’s accusations that he had a role in the Kennedy assassination.
In one interesting piece of analysis, USA Today senior political reporter Heidi Przybyla told Matthews and the other panelists that the media will need to so some soul-searching after Election Day on how they covered Trump and his endless statements:
Honestly, part of it is just the jujitsu that Donald Trump has done that I think was referenced earlier that he's able to quickly pivot off these nefarious statements and frankly, I think when this is all over, we the media, also need to take a critical look at how we’ve dealt with Donald Trump and the statements he's made[.]
As he did throughout the show and on Tuesday, Matthews offered both a vociferous defense of Cruz and passionate outrage at Trump’s invoking of the Kennedy’s murder:
I just think, serious, yesterday, very vehemently, he said on Fox & Friends on Fox that Rafael Cruz was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald before the killing and he — this is a horrendous thing. It's like an alarm going off on the air. Now today, when asked about it, he said, oh, well I just mentioned something in the papers. I mean, how did — this is the weird part. The ability to skip away from something — as if he didn't say it.
The relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on May 4 can be found below.
MSNBC’s Hardball
May 4, 2016
6:02 p.m. Eastern
CHUCK TODD: I think part of it is because of how unenthusiastic Ted Cruz and John Kasich are about rallying around their nominee. Right? It was the fact that contributed to it a little bit. The nasty tone the campaign took yesterday, right? Just yesterday, it became an exchange of pathological liar, according to Ted Cruz, about Donald Trump and then Donald Trump linking Ted Cruz' father to the JFK assassination. So, it went off the rails just yesterday[.]
(....)
6:40 p.m. Eastern
MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Yeah, well and I think he started doing it a bit with his own candidacy. He actually didn’t care when he started talking about the idea that people were not being honest with what they were paying when they went after Rubio on his debt, for exmaple, he knew he had filed bankruptcy over and over again. He’s like, ‘What are you going to do with me?’ This idea that he started surfacing that Cruz himself had dalliances, he didn't care even though he knows he has skeletons in this closet. I actually think it's a strategy he's going to go after. I don't think it's much he can say that the majority of Americans don't already know about Hillary Clinton.
MATTHEWS: Well, no. There’s a lot of people are 18 years old that haven't heard this garbage. Right? There are people born free of knowing about Whitewater and Vince Foster and all this crud. He just brings it all back and says, this is all new stuff to think about.
WALL STREET JOURNAL’s COLLEEN MCCAIN NELSON: But is Whitewater the more interesting the second time around? I mean, the first time around, we didn't — most — the average voter didn't know what Whitewater was, so is it more compelling the second time?
MATTHEWS: It didn’t work. Well, e-mails. Say it louder! Say e-mails, say Benghazi a million times.
NELSON: Right. Exactly. He's going to try everything. He's going to throw the kitchen sink at her, but I mean, the Clinton team says they are eager for this. They want Donald Trump to be Donald Trump.
(....)
7:43 p.m. Eastern
USA TODAY's HEIDI PRZYBYLA: Honestly, part of it is just the jujitsu that Donald Trump has done that I think was referenced earlier that he's able to quickly pivot off these nefarious statements and frankly, I think when this is all over, we the media, also need to take a critical look at how we’ve dealt with Donald Trump and the statements he's made that have not been —
MATTHEWS: We tried.
PRZYBYLA: We tried —
MATTHEWS: We tried to nail him down.
PRZYBYLA: We do fact-check.
MATTHEWS: I tried. I just think, serious, yesterday, very vehemently, he said on Fox & Friends on Fox that Rafael Cruz was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald before the killing and he — this is a horrendous thing. It's like an alarm going off on the air. Now today, when asked about it, he said, oh, well I just mentioned something in the papers. I mean, how did — this is the weird part. The ability to skip away from something — as if he didn't say it.
