After taking a beating on social media as activists called for his resignation or firing, MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews apologized on Monday for comparing Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) Nevada caucus victory to the Nazi invasion of France.
“As I watched the one-sided results of Saturday’s Democratic caucus in Nevada, I reached for a historic analogy and used a bad one,” Matthews said on MSNBC, as reported by The Hill. “I was wrong to refer to an event from the last days, or actually the first days, of World War II.”
Matthews then apologized to Bernie Sanders, a Jew, for comparing his “well-deserved” victory to Nazi power.
“I’m sorry for comparing anything from that tragic era in which so many suffered, especially the Jewish people, to an electorate result in which you were the well-deserved winner,” he said, adding that he will “strive to do a better job myself” as the primary election unfolds.
Chris Matthews apologizes to Bernie Sanders and his supporters for comparing Bernies NV win to Nazis taking France in WWII pic.twitter.com/gMq9mnq30i
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) February 25, 2020
On Saturday, as Sanders’ victory in Nevada appeared imminent, Matthews joined establishment Democrats in a collective panic over the possibility that an avowed socialist could win the party’s nomination.
“It looks like Bernie Sanders is hard to beat right now,” Matthews said. “I’m with Carville all the way in terms of the dangers of what lurks, what lies ahead in November. I’m very much aware that they’re sitting on so much oppo research on Bernie, what he said in the past about world affairs, how far-left he is … they are going to make the most of that in terms of world politics. They’re going to kill him.”
He continued, “I was reading last night, Brian, I know you’re a history guy too, I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940, and the general, Renault, calls up Churchill and says, ‘It’s over.’ And Churchill says ‘How can it be? You’ve got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?’ He said, ‘It’s over.’ So I have that suppressed feeling. I can’t be as wild as Carville, but he is damn smart, and I think he’s damn right on this one.”
As the weekend unfolded, Matthews faced a scolding on social media as several hardcore Sanders’ supporters called for his firing.
Of course, Matthews was hardly alone in his fear about a Sanders victory; none other than former Obama National Finance Committee Member Don Peebles said that he would have a difficult time voting for a socialist in the primary.
“There’s no way I could vote for Bernie Sanders as a socialist,” Peebles said Sunday. “I believe things need to be shaken up, and voters on the Republican side as well thought they did, and that’s how Trump got the nomination, and that’s why he’s president. I think these centrist Democrats need to articulate a much more aggressive vision to moving the nation forward and bringing everybody else into the prosperity that we’re seeing right now.”
Former Clinton adviser James Carville referred to the rise of Bernie Sanders as “political suicide.”
“The happiest person right now is Vladimir Putin,” Carville said on Saturday. “I don’t think Sanders wants Putin to help. I think they don’t like this story. But the story is a fact. This thing is going very well for Vladimir Putin. I promise you. He’s probably staying up watching this right now. How you doing, Vlad?”