On the October 27 Hardball, anchor Chris Matthews and MSNBC contributor Michelle Bernard took turns denouncing GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee as an anti-Semite. Their sole piece of evidence for the claim: Huckabee lamenting that Hillary Clinton regularly corresponded via email to longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal, but not once prior to the deadly 9/11 Benghazi attack with Amb. Chris Stevens.
Apparently saying the word "Blumenthal" is now a dog-whistle.
Here's the relevant transcript:
MSNBC
Hardball
Oct. 27, 2015; 7:47 p.m. EasternCHRIS MATTHEWS: Finally, Michael Huckabee, he is Michael, Mike Huckabee, dipped further into the well of conspiracy theory, Benghazi theories here on Fox on Friday, suggesting that Hillary Clinton could have averted the Benghazi tragedy. Listen to the words.
Former Gov. MIKE HUCKABEE (R-Ark.): It was just fascinating that Sidney Blumenthal had a lot more communication with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State than her ambassador to Libya. And you have to wonder, if she had been as willing to cooperate and communicate with Chris Stevens as she was Sidney Blumenthal, and had she been as honest with the American people as she was with her own daughter and the Egyptian government, would four Americans be alive today?
MATTHEWS: You know what, guys? I am not the anti-Semitic police, but I want to try this by all three of you. If this guy was Joe McGee or Jimmy Brown or any kind of regular name that wasn't obviously or seemed to be Jewish, would we be hearing these names thrown around? The other day, I heard Saul Alinksy thrown in with Lenin and Marx! Saul Alinksy included.
What is this about these names that the Republicans, especially the hicks love to use and throw around? It's a tricky question, but I'm sorry, I've heard it from too many friends of mine who are Jewish who are sick of this. Why Sidney Blumenthal has become this name of evil? Your thoughts, Michelle?
MICHELLE BERNARD: Well, you know what--
MATTHEWS: It's relentless.
BERNARD: -- I don't really want to say what I actually, actually believe, but, I mean, Sidney Blumenthal, we keep hearing it over and over and over again. And when you think about the farthest, most right, most extreme people that make up the base of the Republican Party, they are anti-women, anti-black, anti-many things, including and on some occasions, anti-Jewish, and maybe that is why Mike Huckabee is saying what he's saying. He needs something to grab attention, to get people to talk about him. Because evangelicals have spoken, right now their man is Ben Carson, not Mike Huckabee.
Of course, this is rich coming from Matthews, given his arguably anti-Semitic attacks on GOP donor Sheldon Adelson as a puppet master in control of his "sock puppet," Marco Rubio. Matthews also referred to an Adelson-backed pro-Israel group as a "whore bar."
Neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol, who is also Jewish, has also been on the receiving end of the puppet master charge.
Perhaps Matthews need only look in the mirror to find the true anti-Semite.
