MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews left viewers on Tuesday night with a rather disturbing image of Matthews grunting and stretching while giving his best Incredible Hulk impression ahead of a Phoenix Trump rally that he insinuated could turn violent.
The Atlantic’s Rosie Gray was noting the difference between Trump with a Teleprompter versus without when Matthews interjected that the latter is “[w]hen his Incredible Hulk thing grows in him.”
“And he goes like “rarrrr,” you know? And he starts doing that thing he does. How’s he going to play it? Well, we’re going to find out. It is actually going to happen tonight,” Matthews added as he raised his arms and let out a loud growl.
Previewing the 10:00 p.m. Eastern Trump rally in Arizona, Matthews and his media comrades must be licking their chops at the possibility of painting Trump as inciting violence:
I’m looking at the crowd down there. We'll talk about it later in the show. But there's a crowd building down there and it’s not too pro-Trump. I’m thinking there could be trouble there tonight. It looks like there’s some people that are there that really don't like him are ready to show up and make their selves heard tonight.
Moments before that, Matthews wondered to Gray if Trump would be lobbing out “red meat” to his base at the rally despite the fact that his Monday night speech hoping for unity was emblematic of a “Mother Theresa performance” or one by Oprah Winfrey.
Matthews later reemphasized his soft prediction by wondering aloud to the Arizona Republic’s Dan Nowicki:
You know, I remember during campaign and, Dan, you probably remember — remember when he went to Chicago, to an urban area, a minority area and he almost — it seemed to me what he was doing was trying to stick a fight. Get a fight going, get protesters out there going fist-to-fist against his troops, his people and it helped him politically. That's what he was up to. Do you think he picked Phoenix because he influence would be opposition in the streets?
Nowicki seemed to push back besides arguing that a precarious situation could have broken out if the White House had gone through with the alleged rumors that Trump was mulling a pardoning of controversial former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Tuesday’s creepy visual and prediction of violence was brought to you by Allstate, Lincoln Motor Company, and Sunday NFL Ticket.
Here’s the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on August 22:
MSNBC’s Hardball
August 22, 2017
7:13 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, let's talk about tonight because we've seen the red meat thrown into the cage, Rosie. We’ve seen it. We know what it looks like. He’s — he’s like a nightclub comic. He lives off the crowd. He’s got to have interaction and the only way he does it is with the lines. “Lock her up!” Right? “Build the wall?” Are we — how can he do that after last night’s Mother Theresa performance?
ROSIE GRAY: Well, I think —
MATTHEWS: Or Oprah Winfrey’s performance of we’re all friends together? We're all in it together? Well, he’s not going to do that tonight.
GRAY: Well, like Astead was saying, you know, we tend to see these two versions of the president. One is they get him to stick to these, you know, sort of teleprompter speeches and then he gets to sort of let loose at these campaign rallies which is where he feels very comfortable, he feeds off the energy of the crowd and that’s often when, you know, some of the more sort of combustible moments have happened.
MATTHEWS: When his Incredible Hulk thing grows in him. And he goes like “Rarrrr,” you know? And he starts doing that thing he does. How’s he going to play it? Well, we’re going to find out. It is actually going to happen tonight and I’m looking at the crowd down there. We'll talk about it later in the show. But there's a crowd building down there and it’s not too pro-Trump. I’m thinking there could be trouble there tonight. It looks like there’s some people that are there that really don't like him are ready to show up and make their selves heard tonight.
(....)
7:34 p.m. Eastern
MATTHEWS: You know, I remember during campaign and, Dan, you probably remember — remember when he went to Chicago, to an urban area, a minority area and he almost — it seemed to me what he was doing was trying to stick a fight. Get a fight going, get protesters out there going fist-to-fist against his troops, his people and it helped him politically. That's what he was up to. Do you think he picked Phoenix because he influence would be opposition in the streets?
DAN NOWICKI: Well, I think he — certainly the talk about possibly pardoning former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio really did stoke emotions here. Probably the decision he announced earlier today that there wouldn't be a pardon announced. Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that earlier that it was a kind of responsible decision to maybe, you know, ease tensions here because I think if he had come her and pardoned Arpaio on-stage, you know, a capricious situation regarding security on the outside might really erupt.
