On the July 14 edition of Hardball With Chris Matthews, the left-wing MSNBC host continued his pattern of spewing convenient yet historically inaccurate facts. After playing an amusing, if not crude, clip of John Oliver poking fun at the recently unearthed love letters of former President Warren G. Harding, he joked, “is it worth noting that the presidential election of 1920 was the first in which men and women both voted thanks to the passage of the 19th amendment?”
Classic Matthews to forget that women actually had presidential suffrage in over half the states before the passage of the 19th Amendment. In fact, women voters actually had a large impact on the 1916 reelection of the incumbent and very first progressive president, Woodrow Wilson. [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
Hopefully next time the Lean Forward host will remember to fact check his lame jokes before making them on national television.
See transcript below:
MSNBC
Hardball With Chris Matthews
July 14, 2014
7:31 a..m. Eastern
1 minute and 14 seconds
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Time now for the sideshow. The Library of Congress is set to release over a hundred letters written by former U.S. President Warren G. Harding later this month. Advanced copies obtained by the New York Times portray a president who was a lot racier than you might have expected. Certainly I didn’t. Here is how John Oliver reacted to the letters last night.
JOHN OLIVER: A forty year old mother of two should be reading them on her kindle. Because this is an actual passage from his actual letters, “I feel that there will never be any relief until I take a long, deep, wild draft on your lips and bury my face on your pillowing breasts.” I've got to say, damn, Warren! You nasty! No one, no one is going to be able to look at you in the same way Harding. I will say this for Warren Harding, as a president, he was terrible. But as an R & B lyricist he was way ahead of his time. He really puts the Warren G. into Warren G. Harding.
MATTHEWS: Anyway, but is it worth noting that the presidential election of 1920 was the first in which men and women both voted thanks to the passage of the 19th amendment? Hmm, lots to think about there.
