MSNBC’s breaking news anchor Brian Williams has had quite the few weeks with deplorable and head-scratching moments, but he again couldn’t help himself on Thursday night while covering the terrorist truck attack in Nice, France by apologizing to Hardball host Chris Matthews for having “just plowed over the normal hour of airtime” for him.
Williams was transitioning from NBC News Trump campaign correspondent Katy Tur providing a brief updated on Donald Trump’s veepstakes news when the disgraced ex-NBC Nightly News admitted that “the beat goes on there in politics” before making the ill-timed toss to Matthews for some thoughts before All In host Chris Hayes took over.
“We have just plowed over the normal hour airtime of Chris Matthews tonight because of this confluence of breaking news and I wanted to go to Chris while we still can and, Chris, hear from you about just what we've been witnessing here,” Williams proclaimed.
Seemingly not realizing the high numbers of Muslims in France compared to other European countries, Matthews ruled that “this is the world we live in now and for whatever reason, France has become the epicenter of all this terrorism now for months, if you include Belgium, so much of it’s been in the very important continent of Europe and it's all about that.”
“A lot of Arab people live in that — those countries, especially in France and you see it when you visit there. Some are assimilated, some are not. There's a lot of anger against these immigrants, and anger from the immigrants. It's a cauldron and to see a beautiful city like Nice...be disturbed at a time of celebration — of national celebration, by a truck, out to kill people, to maim many others,” he added.
In the same hour over on CNN, former CIA officer and CNN intelligence and security analyst Bob Baer lamented Israel moving “far to the right” in response to similar truck attacks in their history along with the Brexit vote last month being “boost[ed]” following this attack of mass murder.
The relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on July 14 can be found below.
MSNBC’s Hardball
July 14, 2016
7:59 p.m. Eastern
BRIAN WILLIAMS: This is Donald Trump on a phone interview from the last hour: “But I haven't made my final, final decision. I mean, I've got three people that are fantastic.” So the beat goes on there in politics. We have just plowed over the normal hour airtime of Chris Matthews tonight because of this confluence of breaking news and I wanted to go to Chris while we still can and, Chris, hear from you about just what we've been witnessing here.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, this is the world we live in now and for whatever reason, France has become the epicenter of all this terrorism now for months. If you include Belgium, so much of it’s been in the very important continent of Europe and it's all about that. A lot of Arab people live in that — those countries, especially in France and you see it when you visit there. Some are assimilated, some are not. There's a lot of anger against these immigrants, and anger from the immigrants. It's a cauldron and to see a beautiful city like Nice or along the Cote D'Azur like that be disturbed at a time of celebration — of national celebration, by a truck, out to kill people, to maim many others, but to kill so many people so quickly in cold blood, looking in their faces through the windshield and killing them, because that's what you want to do that day and here at home, I must say something about this decision by Trump, if it is Mike Pence, he's managed to really pick a rose here.
