On Thursday’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews took issue with guest and former Obama Justice Department official Neal Katyal when he compared President Trump’s behavior during the Russia probe to O.J. Simpson trying to discredit the LAPD during his murder.
Now, why mention this? While Matthews quibbling with a point raised by a guest is nothing new, it’s noteworthy because the pundit seemed to have suffered some amnesia since he made a similar Trump-Simpson comparison less than a year ago.
For 2018, Katyal observed that “Donald Trump is not acting like the President” but instead “acting really like O.J.” in that “defense lawyers know that when you have a client who’s guilty, you've got one good card to play and that is attack law enforcement, attack the prosecutor, call them biased.”
“And that's what the President's strategy has been and it's a lot worse here than what an ordinary private citizen like O.J., O.J. is a private citizen. He’s has no duties to law enforcement or anything, but the President is, of course, oath bound to stand up for law enforcement,” Katyal added.
Katyal tried to continued on, but Matthews interrupted to push back out of supposed fairness because “the metaphor there, you know, Johnnie Cochran knew that the LAPD had a bad reputation, especially in the black community out there for unfairness.”
“So, he played into a reality. It wasn't like he created this image of the LAPD. They had it,” Matthews opined, which Katyal conceded since Trump employing this strategy is “worse” because he’s supposed to be “standing up for the law enforcement and for the justice system.”
As for Matthews’s hypocrisy, he ended his July 20, 2017 show by noting the significance of Trump stating in a New York Times interview that Special Counsel Robert Mueller should not cross hiss red line by examining the First Family’s finances.
Here’s what Matthews said:
As Trump sees things, people working in the federal government works for Donald Trump, and that includes U.S. Senators from Nevada who don’t share the political assessments on health care to Attorneys Generals who he wants to serve as his personal Johnnie Cochrans and Special Counsels named specifically to investigate him, Donald Trump. Well, Donald Trump, we all need to know is now seeing himself as above investigating.
All told, it shouldn’t be surprising that he was this short-sighted. After all, he is Chris Matthews.
To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on February 8, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s Hardball
February 8, 2018
7:34 p.m. EasternCHRIS MATTHEWS: How do you see this from two sides, watching these two sides of Mueller moving along, grinding along quietly, not doing any press and then you see the President and his people coming up with all these memos and midnight rides and anything to confuse the game?
NEAL KATYAL: Yeah. You're absolutely right, Chris. Every time that Mueller or the other people on his team find something out, the President throws up some sort of chaff or dust and says look over here, look over there or something like that. And at this point, Donald Trump is not acting like the President. He's acting really like O.J. I mean, we defense lawyers know that when you have a client who’s guilty, you've got one good card to play and that is attack law enforcement, attack the prosecutor, call them biased. And that's what the President's strategy has been and it's a lot worse here than what an ordinary private citizen like O.J., O.J. is a private citizen. He’s has no duties to law enforcement or anything, but the President is, of course, oath bound to stand up for law enforcement and the other thing is that O.J. or —
MATTHEWS: Just to be fair about that, the metaphor there, you know, Johnnie Cochran knew that the LAPD had a bad reputation, especially in the black community out there for unfairness. So, he played into a reality. It wasn't like he created —
KATYAL: Right.
MATTHEWS: — this image of the LAPD. They had it.
KATYAL: Absolutely. 100 percent, Chris and that's what makes this worse. The FBI is the pride of the world in terms of law enforcement and the President should be, like every other president, standing up for the law enforcement and for the justice system and saying look, I'll cooperate. I trust you. We have the American justice system which is the envy of the world. Instead, this President goes and attacks them in a way no president has done and it's a lot worse than a private citizen. Remember all the weapons Donald Trump has at his disposal. He's already fired the chief investigator Jim Comey. He's got an army of taxpayer-funded lawyers to defend him unlike private citizens and of course, he's got his own guy, Rod Rosenstein supervising his investigation, the investigation of him. So that's unlike any private citizen and the idea that he then goes and denigrates law enforcement, boy, that is just a horrible thing.
