As the host of MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews has said some very startling things along the way, but it’s hard to top his comment during Tuesday’s edition regarding the behavior of Republican men, who “are told” to “read The Wall Street Journal, play golf and talk about pro sports."
"I mean," he added, "the men especially are all programmed a certain way. They don’t have too many outliers, Republicans. They all behave basically the same, right?”
Matthews made the surprising remark during a discussion on how Donald Trump is perceived by Republican members of Congress, who are supposedly “muted in their criticism” of the president.
Speaking with his “Hardball Rountable,” Matthews asked why Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives are muted in their criticism of Trump, and The Guardian's Sabrina Siddiqui replied: “Because they know the Republican electorate is overwhelmingly behind” the president.
“There’s polling that suggests that as many as 70 to 80 percent of Republicans now believe that the entire Russia probe is a witch hunt,” she added. “And I think Republicans are thinking much more about the politics than they are the substance.”
The host then asked: Is that support “a cultural problem with the Republican Party as opposed to most Americans?”
Siddiqui responded that their backing is “going to have a transformative effect on the party.”
At that point, Matthews asserted: “Republicans are told” to “read the Wall Street Journal, play golf and talk about pro sports.”
“I mean, the men especially are all programmed a certain way,” he continued. “They don’t have too many outliers, Republicans. They all behave basically the same, right?”
The liberal host then noticed that Margaret Carlson, a columnist who was also a member of the panel, was laughing.
“You must play golf,” he asserted. “You don’t play tennis.”
Once Carlson replied that Matthews was correct, the liberal anchor added that Republicans “must watch sports and talk about the NFL. You must ... and what else? Read the Wall Street Journal and believe the op-ed page.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, the MSNBC host started the month by proclaiming that he’s “hungry for a verdict” of guilt in Robert Mueller’s probe regarding whether Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
A few days later, Matthews and his panel slammed the President for pulling the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear treaty, declaring the move a victory for “chicken hawks” that makes the world “less safe.”
The MSNBC anchor’s next targets were gun owners across the country and the National Rifle Association after a high school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, led him to declare the incident “a common story now in America, as is the absence of action by the country’s leaders.”
As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, Matthews responded to the NFL’s ruling that teams might be fined if football players kneel during the National Anthem by claiming that Trump supporters at the Fox News Channel want everyone “to hate each other.”
Obviously, the Hardball host prefers to save his venom for use only against conservative Republicans while giving fellow liberals and Democrats a free pass. Since he’s been doing that for almost 20 years, perhaps he’s the one who has actually been “programmed.”
