Chris Matthews Lies In Boast About His 'Number One' Bestseller on JFK

Keith Morelli of the Tampa Tribune is not much of a fact-checker. His story on Chris Matthews on Tuesday began: "Veteran newsman and 'Hardball' host Chris Matthews will be in Tampa this weekend, touting his new book about John F. Kennedy."

The next sentence quoted Matthews from a Monday phone interview: "No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list for 10 weeks." The problem? Matthews lied. He has been on the best-seller list for 10 weeks with "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero." But it's never been number one on the NYT's Hardcover Nonfiction list. It debuted at number three on the November 20 list and sat at number 14 on the January 22 list.

Over the ten weeks, the Matthews book has been third, fourth, fourth, fifth, fifth, fifth, fourth, fifth, ninth, and 14th. The number one book of that entire period has been Walter Isaacson's biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs.

In fact, Bill O'Reilly's book "Killing Lincoln" was number one for all four weeks in October and then was number two above Matthews for the first nine weeks of the Matthews book's distribution. He slipped to number three in the latest list, eleven slots above Matthews.

Matthews likes to lecture about politicians lying us into war. He must surely find lying his way into the number one slot is much more defensible.