Chris Matthews

Chris Matthews and former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele got into a heated debate Tuesday over the Hardball host painting the GOP with "one brush."

At the end of the segment, Steele said, "You're not having a broad-based discussion any longer. You're becoming a cartoon of the cartoon" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Al Sharpton on Monday said one of the funniest things uttered on MSNBC this year.

Talking with Chris Matthews immediately after President Obama's speech in Hartford, Connecticut, Sharpton said - with a straight face no less! - "We’re not engaging in Americans hating each other" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

There's been a lot of discussion lately about women balancing their careers with marriage and family.

On the syndicated Chris Matthews Show this weekend, the BBC's Katty Kay said, "My advice would have been to younger women to focus more on when you have children rather than saying you have to find a husband when you're in university...The marriage component of it to me feels like a fairly old-fashioned piece of advice" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

TIME's Joe Klein went on another anti-gun rant this weekend.

On the syndicated Chris Matthews Show, he said the desire to own a semi-automatic weapon "because the government in Washington is about to oppress us...is paranoia that these groups like the NRA, the Gun Owners of America, they feed this crap and it really is anti-American" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Clueless Chris Matthews stepped into it this week when he expressed shock that women actually fear domestic violence. After watching the clip on the "Media Mash" segment on Fox News Channel's April 3 edition of Hannity, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell observed "It is a head scratcher because he spent all of last year and all of 2011 telling us that there was a war on women." [video embedded below the page break]

"He doesn't understand that there are -- in 2010, there were 765,000 cases documented of attacks on women. So suddenly he's oblivious to that," the Media Research Center founder observed. Host Sean Hannity also addressed the latest incident where Chris Matthews tried to tar conservatives with murderous violence, this time the slayings of prosecutors in Texas that may be connected to the Aryan Brotherhood. Responding to that video, Bozell observed:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews had quite a heated debate Thursday with Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America.

At the end of a highly-contentious Hardball segment, Pratt told his host that he's against all background checks "because we don't trust people like you" (video follows with transcript):

When I saw the recently released PPP poll concerning America's belief in "conspiracy theories," I knew someone in the media would cherry-pick it to trash conservatives.

Living down to my lowest expectations was MSNBC's Chris Matthews who on Wednesday's Hardball chose to use the poll to attack Republicans as well as "the peanut gallery for Glenn Beck and company" without ever mentioning any Democrat responses (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews is not known for his eloquent choice of words.  Wednesday, April 3 proved to be no different than any other day as the liberal Hardball host as he asked, during a discussion on Hillary Clinton’s political future, if domestic violence is “something women really worry about."

The facepalm moment occurred during segment with NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell and Howard Feinman of The Huffington Post. Matthews gleefully admired Hillary Clinton’s appearance at the Vital Voices awards ceremony. Mitchell, who herself attended the ceremony with Clinton, provided another glowing portrayal of Hillary, commenting that:

An unhinged Chris Matthews exploited another tragedy on Wednesday, connecting the pro-Second Amendment views of Ted Cruz and other Republicans to the shootings of two prosecutors in Texas. The Hardball anchor began by dredging up failed Senate candidate Sharron Angle's three-year-old reference to "Second Amendment remedies." Matthews connected, "If that was frightening enough for you, how about what's happening in Colorado and Texas?...In Texas, two prosecutors were killed, a third has now pulled out of a case against the Aryan brotherhood of Texas for, quote, 'security reasons.'"

Matthews made his linkage totally clear: "We've got a Texas senator, Ted Cruz, who won't let the Senate hold a democratic vote on gun safety. So, no democracy. We've got people out there using guns to get even with public officials, intimidating those they don't kill." Skipping from Angle, to the murder of prosecutors, to Ted Cruz, he snarled, "This is where we are with guns in this country. Second Amendment remedies being executed on public officials. Refusal by some elected officials to let us have a democratic vote on what to do about it." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

As NewsBusters reported, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Monday actually said, “Racism is the belief that one race - whites - should rule all others.”

Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain responded to this nonsense on Fox News's Hannity Tuesday stating, "It's laughable what Chris Matthews is saying...Maybe he doesn't have enough black friends who's telling him the truth" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

Hopefully, everyone has by now figured out that yesterday’s Notable Quotables posting was an April Fools spoof, an annual tradition here at the Media Research Center, where our staff makes up quotes in an effort to parody the everyday outrageousness of liberal journalists.

This year’s twist: While all of the quotes were attributed to MSNBC host Chris Matthews, his over-the-top rhetoric is nearly impossible to parody, so eight of the 21 published quotes in the full edition were real (as were five of the 14 in the truncated version posted here at NB). The challenge for readers was to separate the real ones from the fake ones.

After the jump, you’ll find the same text as in yesterday’s post, this time with correct attributions and links to the corresponding MRC-TV video clip for each of the genuine quotes:

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews seems to think that only white people can be racist.

On Monday’s Hardball, he actually said, “Racism is the belief that one race - whites - should rule all others” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Does Chris Matthews have a new Democrat to give him a "thrill" up his leg? On Monday, the Hardball anchor praised Hillary Clinton's stature leading up to a hypothetical 2016 run as the most impressive since General Eisenhower in 1952. Dwight Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, oversaw D-Day and defeated the world-wide threat of the Nazis.  Clinton, on the other hand, has been a politician and the Secretary of State during the disaster in Benghazi.

The 67-year-old Matthews reminisced about seeing a newsreel of Eisenhower at a movie theater. His dad informed him that Ike would be president at some point. The MSNBC host compared, "Well, nobody outside of incumbent presidents, and not even some of them, has in all the years since enjoyed such a commanding position going into a presidential cycle as Hillary Clinton." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

[April 2 update post: See which quotes were real and which were fake]

The latest edition of MRC's Notable Quotables newsletter (PDF) has just been posted over at MRC.org, a special "Matthews Mega-Meltdown Edition." In this issue: our favorite MSNBC host drools over the “perfect” Barack Obama, hailing the “amazing economy” Obama has delivered to America and lobbying for the new Pope Francis to bring an Obama-esque “hope and change” regime to the Catholic Church.

At the same time, Chris decries the “racism” of opposing anything Obama proposes; wonders if Republicans will switch to “sexism” if Hillary Clinton becomes the top Democrat in 2016; and sees an anti-Michele Bachmann message in Robert Frost’s poem, “The Witch of Coos.” Oh, and Chris insists: “Hardball is absolutely non-partisan.” You can read highlights after the jump; the whole package of 21 outrageous quotes is at www.MRC.org.

[UPDATED: See below.] Chris Matthews on Thursday took a break from comparing conservatives to Nazis and instead compared them to movie Nazis. The Hardball anchor opened the program by referencing the classic movie Casablanca. In this example, Barack Obama is the good guy and the Second Amendment supporters are the Nazis.

Matthews spewed, "You know that scene in Casablanca when the French police captain shoots the Nazi, Major Strasser, and Humphrey Bogart does the right thing by Ingrid Bergman, and the anti-Nazi hero Victor Laszlo says 'Welcome back to the fight, Rick'?" In case anyone was unclear on the comparison, the liberal journalist added, "Well, I felt that way today watching President Obama get back to the front in the historic battle for gun safety." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Nazis are fast becoming the favorite slur of the hosts on MSNBC. Chris Matthews last Friday compared the "aggressive" push for war in Iraq to what lead to the prosecution of war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. Matthews appeared with Chris Hayes, Alex Wagner and other MSNBC regulars to discuss a new cable documentary on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war.

After reading a congratulatory reading of a column he wrote prior to the war, Matthews lashed out: "I was really embarrassed by my country, how a President of such limited ability, limited rhetorical ability, mental ability, historic ability, could talk us into a war." Making one of his favorite comparisons, the Hardball anchor sneered, "You know, the Nuremberg trials were primarily, before the Holocaust and all those other issues, was against people who launched an aggressive war. And this was an aggressive war." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] So, in this example, George W. Bush is one of the Nazis? 

Chris Matthews’ week of hateful speech concluded on March 23 with the liberal MSNBC host going after Tea Party favorite Rep. Michele Bachmann. 

Speaking on Friday, Matthews disgustingly, albeit all too predictably asserted that Bachmann’s criticism of President Obama was motivated by racist beliefs.  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

Chris Matthews’ liberal activism reached new heights on March 21 surrounding his push for greater gun control legislation.  Speaking during the opening segment for Hardball, Matthews provided his audience with email addresses and phone numbers to members of Congress, telling them that:

For all those who care about gun safety, let me repeat what I said last night, get a hold of your Senator and Member of Congress and say you want a real background check on people who buy guns.  [See video after jump.]

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is the "real face of character assassination," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell argued on the March 21 edition of Fox News Channel's Hannity program. The Media Research Center founder and president reacted to just the latest instance of the Hardball host bashing Tea Party conservatives as racist, xenophobic, and anti-gay. "On Monday night, he was so off on his attacks on CPAC" that the non-partisan media criticism site Mediaite.com "called it grossly unfair and inaccurate." Two nights later, Matthews practically wrote off as insufficiently black African-American politicians like Mia Love, Herman Cain, former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who identify strongly with the Tea Party movement.

Also discussed on the "Media Mash" segment was a new Pew survey showing MSNBC is 85 percent commentary to 15 percent news reporting [watch the full Mash segment below the page break].

Ten years ago, the perilously liberal talk show host Phil Donahue was fired by MSNBC.

In an interview with HuffPostLive Thursday, Donahue spoke candidly about what led to his termination including his frosty relationship with Chris Matthews who he felt was threatened by him.

Two days after Chris Matthews and fellow MSNBCer Joy-Ann Reid suggested that participants at the annual CPAC supported segregation, the liberal host was back at it on March 20.  Matthews brought on two liberal guests to slam the Tea Party for its “racist” and “xenophobic” mentality.    

Speaking with his guests on Wednesday’s Hardball, Matthews asked:

Once again, MSNBC shows it has no sense of decency when it comes to its political contributors making extreme statements on its network.  The latest example comes from contributor Joy-Ann Reid, managing editor of TheGrio.com, who asserted that attendees of the annual CPAC conference sympathized with pro-segregationist comments made by one extreme individual attending the three-day conference. 

At issue is video that has emerged from a CPAC panel discussion called “Trump the Race Card” hosted by K. Carl Smith of Frederick Douglass Republicans.  After Smith commented that, “[Frederick] Douglass escaped from slavery. He writes a letter to his former slave master and says, I forgive you for all things you did for me,” an attendee of the panel named Scott Terry then interjected, “For giving him shelter and food?”  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

Chris Matthews on Monday offensively connected Senator Ted Cruz with the actions of disturbed conspiracy theorists who believe the Sandy Hook massacre was a government plot. Talking to Connecticut Governor Daniel Malloy, the Hardball host lectured, "While the world has viewed last December's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school as an unspeakable tragedy, some gun rights dead-enders have seen it more as an inconvenient truth."

Matthews began by asking Malloy, "What is it that springs it out of our country's culture that people won't even accept reality in fights like this?" Later in the segment, he played a clip of the "far-right" Cruz battling with Dianne Feinstein last week over gun rights. Matthews snarled, "Well, there you have it. This is the face of the new Republican right." What does the Republican senator from Texas have to do with "Sandy Hook Truthers?" Absolutely nothing. But Matthews wanted to smear Cruz with the association. Ironically, it was the cable anchor who, on February 14, mocked Cruz as the new "Joe McCarthy."

"No chance anyone’s looking for a nekkid picture of Mitch McConnell.”

As amazing as it might seem, such was actually said by MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Hardball Monday (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In case you missed it, the February jobs report on Friday contained some encouraging news. National Journal’s Michael Hirsh wrote that the BLS numbers gave President Obama “what he’s wanted for four years: an unemployment rate that’s below where he started as president, 7.7 percent.” But Hirsh was guarded in his optimism, also acknowledging that “things are not really as good as the numbers suggest, and they are all but certain to get worse.”

No such considerations entered into the mind of Chris Matthews Friday night when he wondered aloud on “Hardball” when Republicans were going finally make sure that Obama got “credit for this amazing economy that’s coming back.”

Andrew Sullivan made a comment on Sunday's The Chris Matthews Show that's guaranteed to offend many people on both sides of the aisle.

In a discussion about whether the change in opinion concerning same-sex marriage among Catholic voters might impact who is selected as the next Pope, Sullivan said, "There are so many gays electing the next Pope that who knows whether that would happen" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Being that March is Women’s History Month and March 8 is International Women’s Day, what better time to showcase a prominent female journalist being treated poorly by her male colleagues, particularly ones from the "war on women" network itself, MSNBC.

Speaking with the liberal Huffington Post, CBS This Morning co-host Norah O’Donnell describes a not-so-pleasant experience with former NBC colleagues Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann back in 2008:

The liberal media should have reported President Obama's Chicken Little sky-is-falling claims about the sequester, but "with clear skepticism" instead of mindlessly parroting them, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Fox News's Sean Hannity on the March 7 edition of his eponymous program.  "They should have gone to the American people and in effect said, this man is lying," but instead, "they did the exact opposite. They waved the pom-poms for him," the Media Research Center (MRC) founder argued.

Even worse, Hannity added, after the sequester ended up being a nothing-burger, the media whined about it, wringing their hands that the public are not concerned. "Let's understand what they mean when they say it's sad.... they're sad that the America people aren't believing the media," Bozell argued, adding the the "big losers" in the whole sequester ordeal are the liberal media, because "people are seeing right through it." [watch the full "Media Mash" segment here]