Continuing on the theme of comparing President Trump to the infamous world dictators, Hardball host Chris Matthews likened Trump on Tuesday to North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and resurrected a tasteless joke from Inauguration Day about Trump channeling Mussolini if he executed son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The MSNBC personality’s latest correlation for the President came just over 10 minutes into the program, after an aside about how he’d keep track of who’d stand up for then-President Bill Clinton and lie concerning his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Referring specifically to Clinton hack James Carville, Matthews equated him to White House press secretary Sean Spicer “because when you start to getting into making your people lie with you and use the United States government — cabinet secretaries are going to be asked this.”
With this set-up, Matthews spat out this analogy (with some mumbling in between):
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They’re going to have to lie with them. You’re misusing your office thoroughly, you know? It gets to be like Kim Jong-un. It gets to be like, oh, you got a great haircut today, Mr. President. Or everything’s great. Or what at the end of the street — you know, at least this time. What do they say about Kim Jong, he thinks he’s the greatest novelist in the world — the greatest everything in the world and they’re all supposed to say it.
Mother Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn interjected, joking that Kim is a basketball fan so “he can play basketball really well.”
Matthews laughed and Corn agreed with the link, fretting:
But this is a problem on so many — it's a problem on so many levels. You’ve been there. If you can’t take advice on these issues of war and peace and the economy and you can’t accept other facts that are beyond what you assume, you can’t make good decisions, the people around you can’t do their jobs and the American public loses faith in you as it already has.
As an aside, it’s interesting that Matthews would make this analogy, seeing as how he’s made clear his feeling about Barack Obama (here, here, and here). But then again, what do I know?
A few minutes later, the laughter grew even louder as Matthews wondered “who’s going to mess with the son-in-law” when there’s a disagreement “[a]lthough Mussolini executed his son-in-law, so there are precedents here.”
On Friday, Matthews uttered something similar as he also dubbed Trump’s Inaugural address “Hitlerian” in its tone.
Here’s the relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on January 24:
MSNBC’s Hardball
January 24, 2017
7:11 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS MATTHEWS: You know, during the — I’m going to go a little bipartisan. You weren’t here, but I was here during the whole Clinton mess and, for a long time, I sort of watched the people around and think who’s going to be honest about this real mess because you have a President saying something that’s not true. Everybody knows it’s not true. He did have this relationship — for whatever you think of it, it was fact. But some people around him like Carville would never deny it. He would just say that itsy bitsy sex thing with his Alabama accent. In other words, he never denied it and I always kept track of the ones who denied it and played like Spicer has to do because when you start to getting into making your people lie with you and use the United States government — cabinet secretaries are going to be asked this. They’re going to have to lie with them. You’re misusing your office thoroughly, you know? It gets to be like Kim Jong-un. It gets to be like, oh, you got a great haircut today, Mr. President. Or everything’s great. Or what at the end of the street — you know, at least this time. What do they say about Kim Jong, he thinks he’s the greatest novelist in the world — the greatest everything in the world and they’re all supposed to say it.
DAVID CORN: Yeah and he can play basketball really well.
MATTHEWS: He’s a great basketball player, well.
CORN: But this is a problem on so many —
MATTHEWS: If you make people lie for you.
CORN: — it's a problem on so many levels. You’ve been there. If you can’t take advice on these issues of war and peace and the economy and you can’t accept other facts that are beyond what you assume, you can’t make good decisions, the people around you can’t do their jobs and the American public loses faith in you as it already has.
(....)
MATTHEWS: This isn’t Secretary Seward against Salmon Chase here, by the way. These are White House people.
MICHAEL STEELE: No. No. This isn’t that deep.
MATTHEWS: But who’s going to mess with the son-in-law?
STEELE: Right and at the end of the day —
[CROSSTALK]
ASHLEY PARKER: No one. No one.
STEELE: — that’s the line. Proximity, proximity, proximity.
MATTEHWS: Although Mussolini executed his son-in-law, so there are precedents here.
[LAUGHTER]
STEELE: Well, there are — there’s precedent for that. The reality is proximity and it’s not just proximity of office space. It’s proximity to the ear of the President.
