Whenever a Republican lawmaker either leaves office, passes away, or trashes a conservative, you can bet that someone in the liberal media will be there to suddenly heap praise on them and MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews was there Thursday night to compared former Speaker of the House John Boehner to “Michael the Archangel” “with wings and sword” versus Ted Cruz as “one in the tail and cloven hooves.”
Matthews dedicated his closing “Let Me Finish” segment to Boehner’s Lucifer comments and couldn’t help but spout off other possible alter egos for Cruz besides Lucifer: “Senator Ted Cruz, Lucifer, the devil, Satan, Beelzebub, the very personage of evil, the leader of the underlife, the chief resident of hell, Lucifer.”
In an observation that’s not exactly a firm reading of the tea leaves, Matthews proclaimed that Cruz is only person “shielding the Republican establishment from its grandest tormenter Donald Trump.” In reality, it’s old guard establishment figures (if that term means anything anymore) that have resigned themselves to a Trump nomination.
Of course, Matthews continued to justify Boehner’s comments by complaining that “this comes after all these years of hellish behavior from the tea party, all these years stretching back to the election of 2010 when the Republican right erupted in this country, beginning its taunting, tormenting, and terrifying of the GOP establishment.”
“Grossly put, it's between those who believe in conservative government and those who believe in conservative opposition to government,” he added.
Before handing off to All In host Chris Hayes, Matthews blurted out his latest piece of imagery that could result in a handful of readers here needing some mind bleach as he touted the chain-smoking Boehner as an “angel” who “never looked this good”: “John Boehner is the angel with wings and sword. He's Michael the Archangel in this picture. Cruz is the one in the tail and cloven hooves. Boehner, let's agree, never looked this good.”
The relevant portion of the transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on April 28 can be found below.
MSNBC’s Hardball
April 28, 2016
7:58 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with the words of former House Speaker John Boehner that are now wafting through the air. “Lucifer in the flesh.” That's what he called Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Lucifer, the devil, Satan, Beelzebub, the very personage of evil, the leader of the underlife, the chief resident of hell, Lucifer.
What more or less can the recent Speaker of the House speak of the man now shielding the Republican establishment from its grandest tormenter Donald Trump? That he is the very being of evil on this Earth, “Lucifer in the flesh.” Well, this comes after all these years of hellish behavior from the tea party, all these years stretching back to the election of 2010 when the Republican right erupted in this country, beginning its taunting, tormenting, and terrifying of the GOP establishment and the man leading that torture is the man John Boehner just branded Beelzebub because it was Ted Cruz who raced over to the House to undermine the leadership there to make governing the House impossible to stymie government by the People's House every hour of every day and this is the divide right now in the Republican Party.
Grossly put, it's between those who believe in conservative government and those who believe in conservative opposition to government. John Boehner is the angel with wings and sword. He's Michael the Archangel in this picture. Cruz is the one in the tail and cloven hooves. Boehner, let's agree, never looked this good.
