Folks, you know the drill. With the end of each year, we look back at some of the nuttiest takes from some of the more infamous liberal media types in 2019. As my colleagues have and will continue to do through December 31, this piece will serve as the recap of the year that Chris Matthews had on MSNBC and his show Hardball.
Impeachment, congressional hearings galore, the Mueller Report, and various Trump controversies have left behind a treasure drove of possibilities (through treasure might not be the best term). To get to ten, a few had to be left off, like this one and this one.
So here they are, presented in chronological order. To read past installments, here's 2016, 2017, and 2018.
1. January 24 — Matthews, Guest Insinuate There Will Be a Terror Attack If Shutdown Doesn’t End Soon
Near the end of the 35-day government shutdown, Matthews and former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D) were lamenting the lack of a spending deal to reopen the government when the MSNBC pundit fretted that “you can get away with graft until the bridge falls down with the school bus crossing it” but “[t]hings get out of hand over time.”
Matthews added that it could take “something with TSA where somebody gets through with a — something they shouldn’t on an airplane,” insinuating an act of terror could have been needed to cause Congress to move.
2. January 29 — Chris Matthews Wonders to Bill Nye If Climate Change Is to Blame for Illegal Immigration
Liberal icon Bill Nye the Science Guy was a guest on January 29's Hardball to talk climate change and the lack of far-left environmental policies from the Trump administration when Matthews dropped this doozy:
I see it in Africa, people in these parts of land with the growing Sahara Desert and the Sahel, and there’s no more arable land left, there’s no trees left, and people are moving north into Europe and in our country, in our hemisphere, it’s people from Central and Latin America moving north because how much is climate related to the migration pattern?
Fortunately, even Nye thought that was a bridge too far.
3. March 22 — Must Watch: Chris Matthews Suffers an EPIC Meltdown Over the Mueller Report
March 22 marked the day that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had submitted his report on the Trump-Russia probe along with the revelation that there would be no addition criminal indictments. So for a media hell-bent on finding Trump-Russia collusion and deeming that Trump was illegitimately elected, it was a massive blow.
Matthews suffered a meltdown of biblical proportions throughout Hardball, lashing out at his guests that Mueller “missed the boat” and couldn’t “connect” all “these dots” that the press had regarding collusion. The full version of this post is well worth the click.
4. April 18 — Matthews: Trump’s Mueller Responses Like ‘Failed Alzheimer’s Test’
On the day of the report’s release, Matthews chimed in during the network’s afternoon coverage and suggested that, based on his reading of the President’s written answers to questions from the Mueller team, Trump came across like “he had failed an Alzheimer’s competency test.”
5. April 25 — Matthews: Trump Is Illegitimate Because He ‘Won a Fluke Election’ With ‘Russian Help’
A week later, Matthews was still reeling from the Mueller Report having found no conspiracy or case going forward for obstruction when he suggested that Trump was indeed an illegitimate President because, in his mind, Trump “won a fluke election” with “Russian help.”
6. May 3 — ICYMI: Matthews Asks African-American Guest If Tough Campaign Work Was Like ‘Slavery’
It was a brief moment on that evening’s Hardball, but Matthews quipped in a question to Center for American Progress campaign director Juanita Tolliver whether working on a difficult and tiring campaign was akin to “slavery.”
And no, that’s not misprint.
7. July 3 — Matthews Fears Trump Supporters Will Bring Confederate Flags, Violence to National Mall
One of 2019's worst liberal media meltdowns took place leading up to, during, and after President Trump’s Fourth of July event A Salute to America at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
A day prior, Matthews falsely predicted that the Trump supporters that would attend the D.C. event and bring not only Confederate flags, but violence as well with a keynote by a President in violation of the Declaration of Independence.
Though it was bad for Matthews, America was the winner in that neither of those things happened.
8. August 29 — Matthews: Trump Is Like Idi Amin Playing with Crayons, Possibly Has Dementia
There was a potpourri of insults on August 29's Hardball as Matthews compared Trump to, as this author’s post stated it, “Idi Amin, Julius Caesar, and Benito Mussolini, who’s like ‘an eight-year-old with crayons’ who must be stopped, so that’s quite a stretch from dementia to a brutal, strategic dictator.”
Referring to an anonymous source telling The Atlantic that Trump has “limited cognitive ability,” Matthews boasted that sort of rhetoric is used to describe “a person being studied for dementia.”
9. October 29 — YIKES! Matthews Hails Steyer as Modern Day John Brown Leading Trump’s Impeachment
Matthews interviewed 2020 Democratic presidential longshot, vanity candidate, and liberal donor Tom Steyer two days before Halloween and, naturally, the former dropped a doozy by comparing Steyer to famed abolitionist John Brown.
Of course, he made the comparison then immediately realized it wasn’t exactly a positive one seeing as how Brown was executed two months later.
10. December 10 — Matthews Hails ‘Boss’ Pelosi Sending Trump to ‘Infamy’; ‘Chilling’ If He Isn’t Removed
Closing out the 2019 list is one installment of Matthews’s impeachment coverage and specifically hours after House Democrats formally unveiled Articles of Impeachment.
Matthews boasted that “House Democrats pushed President Donald Trump closer to the brink of infamy” with articles that were written “in constitutional language” with “no distractions,” “digressions,” and “wasted language.”
