Chris Matthews came completely unglued on Thursday night. Here’s just a few of the descriptions he had for Donald Trump and his supporters: “Cult,” “violent purge,” “goose stepping,” and “dictator.” Regarding Trump’s comments made at the White House, Matthews suggested that, given a few less constitutional restrictions, the President would be preparing for violence: “As I jotted down Trump's words, I wondered what they would mean in a country where the targets of such invective were not protected by a Constitution such as ours.”
He added, “They sounded like the language of a dictator unleashing a violent purge that his targets would be unlikely to survive.” Matthews also raged, “President Trump spoke today with the venom of a black mamba.”
Earlier, while talking to Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown (OH), warned that the President and his supporters are like a North Korean Nazi cult. (You figure out that combination):
Senator, when we look at pictures from North Korea, just an example of a dictatorship, and you watch everybody wearing those high peaked hats and everybody smiling in unison or frowning in unison or marching in unison in goose step, and you watch the people in their so-called assembly, their congress so-called, they are all so frozen in fear of being seen as somehow out of line which is a very strict standard in that country. Are Republicans beginning to act like that? Fearful of not showing the right emotion, even in public? You have to be exuberant in this cult when he stands before them, it seems.
The impeachment trial and the last few weeks seem to have broken Matthews’s already loose grip on reality. On Tuesday, just prior to the State of the Union, the Hardball host compared Trump to Satan and lashed out at Americans considering reelecting the President. They, apparently, are making “a deal with the devil.”
For all the hyperbole about dictator Trump threatening constitutional freedoms, it was Barack Obama who prosecuted and spied on journalists, including Fox’s James Rosen.
A transcript is below. Click “expand” to read more:
MSNBC's Hardball
02/06/2020
7:07 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Senator, when we look at pictures from North Korea, just an example of a dictatorship, and you watch everybody wearing those high peaked hats and everybody smiling in unison or frowning in unison or marching in unison in goose step, and you watch the people in their so-called assembly, their congress so-called, they are all so frozen in fear of being seen as somehow out of line which is a very strict standard in that country. Are Republicans beginning to act like that? Fearful of not showing the right emotion, even in public? You have to be exuberant in this cult when he stands before them, it seems.
(....)
7:58 p.m.
MATTHEWS: President Trump spoke today with the venom of a black mamba. “Witch hunt, evil, corrupt dirtty cops, leakers, liars, disgrace.” These were the viperous words he spewed in the East Room on a day he begun at a prayer breakfast.
DONALD TRUMP: As everybody knows, my family our great country, and your president have been put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people.
MATTHEWS: Trump spit vitriol at the Speaker of the House, and the lone Republican senator who dared to remove him.
TRUMP: I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong. Nor do I like people who say, “I pray for you,” when they know that that's not so.
MATTHEWS: As I jotted down Trump's words, I wondered what they would mean in a country where the targets of such invective were not protected by a Constitution such as ours. They sounded like the language of a dictator unleashing a violent purge that his targets would be unlikely to survive. I have never heard an American president or any figure in our country declare his anger at so many. He was most fiercely unforgiving of those who played a role in his impeachment, from FBI director James Comey to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
TRUMP: It was evil. It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars. And this should never ever happen to another president.
MATTHEWS: The President's clearly not on the road to either moderation, much less reformation. And today, there were none of the calls for unity mentioned at his State of the Union just days ago. Trump is making this personal. He wants payback. For the Democrats, this is what it means: They don't know who they're running for president. They do know who they're running against, not Donald Trump, but this Donald Trump! And that’s Hardball for tonight.
