Had a Fox News host done this, he or she would instantly have been called a racist, but because MSNBC host Chris Matthews is a liberal, he will get a complete pass from the left-leaning media.
Jaime Harrison is a Democrat running to unseat Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). On Friday night he appeared on MSNBC to discuss his candidacy with Matthews, but when the network showed a video of Graham attending a Trump campaign rally in the state, the host confused Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) for Harrison.
“Jaime, I see you standing next to the guy you’re going to beat right there maybe, maybe, Lindsey Graham,” Matthews said.
The camera then shows Matthews and Harrison, who appears a little perplexed by the mistake, though he maintains a smile throughout Matthews’ blunder.
After Matthews makes the mistake, two people off camera tell him that the man next to Graham is actually “Tim Scott.” Matthews appears to be in a loud room, as he doesn’t seem to hear what everyone is telling him.
“Who’s that? I’m sorry,” he says as he struggles to hear his producer correct him. “Oh! It’s the other senator. What am I saying? Big mistake. Mistaken identity there, sorry.”
Chris Matthews confused @harrisonjaime, who is a black Democrat running against Lindsey Graham, for Tim Scott, the black Republican US Senator from South Carolina
This is very awkward pic.twitter.com/kMFITMjU4A
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) February 29, 2020
Journalist Yashar Ali, who posted the clip of Matthews mistaking a Black Democrat for a Black Republican, had previously posted Friday night that, “The question none of my sources at NBC and MSNBC can answer…what value does Chris Matthews bring to the network?”
The question none of my sources at NBC and MSNBC can answer…what value does Chris Matthews bring to the network?
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) February 28, 2020
Just last week, Matthews found himself embroiled in controversy when he compared Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) win in the Nevada caucus to Adolf Hitler taking over France. As The Daily Wire’s Paul Bois reported, some on social media, including Sanders’ communication director Mike Casca, began calling for Matthews to resign.
“Never thought part of my job would be pleading with a national news network to stop likening the campaign of a Jewish presidential candidate whose family was wiped out by the Nazis to the Third Reich,” Casca tweeted.
Investigative reporter Alex Kotch joined in, saying he was “dead serious” about being “really, really insulted by a major pundit on an allegedly liberal news network comparing a Jewish candidate’s overwhelming caucus victory to the French losing a battle with the Nazis.”
“Get this lunatic off the air,” Kotch added.
Matthews has made no secret of his disdain for Sanders, and began the segment simple enough.
“It looks like Bernie Sanders is hard to beat right now,” Matthews said. “I’m with [James] 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.”
But it was what he said next that sent even liberals into a frenzy.
“I was reading last night, Brian [Williams], 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,’” Matthews said. “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.”