Chris Matthews is the host of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews. The confrontational and often historically ignorant Matthews is known for interrupting and blabbering over his guests, and famously remarked that an Obama speech gave him a thrill up his leg. He has flirted with running for office as a Democrat.
“We watched this gory hanging, this absurd hanging, of Saddam Hussein, while these thugs went about this thing on television. We watched this, on our watch. It happened because of us, we gave them the power to do this to the guy. Okay, you start making the big time moral decisions like that, saying ‘Oh, these are the good guys, these are the bad guys.’ I think it’s very dangerous.
…And by the way, if we don’t stop killings Arabs on international television one of these days — that’s all we do is kill Arabs on international television. We don’t fight Africans, we don’t fight Europeans, Who do we fight? Islamic people, on International television. I think that might have something to do with jihad, just guessing. Don’t you?”
“Citizen LaPierre, who is this — is he this screamer of fire in the theater, this tummler of the lunatic fringe? Wayne LaPierre, watch him go to work. He just sent out a mass manifesto linking a lifeline from every spooked-out crowd in the country from one to the other, asking all to arm themselves while there’s still time — arm themselves.
Afraid of looting after a storm? Get a gun. Upset by illegal immigration? Get a gun. Don’t like crime or drugs? Get yourself a damn gun, man. That’s the Wayne LaPierre message today.
Worried about the debt crisis? Worried about the chaos that’s coming afterward? You know the drill, get a gun. Arm yourself, America.
You think this is crazy? Well, this is Wayne LaPierre talking, the head of the NRA. And what’s that tell you? It tells about a new division in America between the confident people who think he`s nuts and the scared, the really scared, who are listening to him right now.
…I have never heard this kind of talk. This talk is crazy. It`s reign of terror talk, like from the French revolution. Get your gun. You’re the one next.
…[H]e looks like he’s the boss. It’s like when Rush Limbaugh speaks and everybody go hides in a cave because they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh. This guy, no matter what he says, if it has a racial tinge, they don’t call him out on it. Nobody seems to do it on the Republican side.”
“You know, I don’t often say it and I rarely say it, but there was echoes of Joe McCarthy there [in Ted Cruz's observation that Iran praised Hagel's nomination], really strong echoes. “
Why is John McCain so angry? Forty years after the Vietnam POWs came home, the most famous of them is angrier than ever.
A nightmare by the way whose flashbacks must haunt still the mind and heart of John Sidney McCain. …I’m absolutely convinced we’re watching a flashback.
“It used to be that the only way to get elected in the old Dixiecrat South was to be the farthest out there in backing segregation. Anyone who showed moderation was seen as soft. Anyone who talked compromise on Civil Rights was suspected of being on the other side.
Well, to win in today’s Republican Party, which began displacing the Dixiecrats a half century ago, you have to be the farthest out there backing guns. Show moderation, you get your NRA badge ripped off you. Agree to any rule on gun safety, and you’re marked as a traitor for life.
Well, it’s not just the back benchers. Today, some of the top people in the Republican Party, the people to watch — Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz — are right out there front in opposing President Obama on gun safety. So what happened? Why is the GOP the party of guns over people?”
“And there’s your guy Ted Cruz, a well-educated guy, another one of these well-educated right wingers like Pat Robertson. It’s like they flush out their high educations when they get out of school for political purposes.”
“I don’t think [Mitt Romney] understands the Constitution of the United States. [Barack Obama]‘s the president of the United
States. You don’t say [to him], ‘you’ll get your chance.’”
“Everybody I’ve met who’s African-American has come up to me, about six inches away from me and very personally said, ‘thank you,’ I met some people in Mozambique. I met some people in Jamaica. It is an international reality, and everybody feels it on that side of the racial divide, and it’s disgusting that white people to whom the dog whistle is aimed, refuse to acknowledge it, is there. It’s been part of our politics. We thought it was gone. It’s back and it’s being used to get votes.”
