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Chris Matthews to end “The Chris Matthews Show”

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:15:00 +0000

Chris Matthews is leaving "The Chris Matthews Show," his nationally syndicated politics talk show on NBC, whose last episode will air July 21, reports TVNewser.

The departure is part of the host's new long-term contract with MSNBC, where he will continue to host "Hardball." Matthews says that with his extra time, he will work "on writing books like the one I’m committed to now on the relationship between Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan, that and producing documentaries on history and politics."

Matthews' full statement, below:

Trump: Chris Matthews “gets dumber” every year

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:02:00 +0000

Donald Trump took up the criticism of MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who, during coverage of the attacks in Boston on Monday, wondered if it could be the work of domestic terrorists. "Normally domestic terrorists, people, tend to be on the far right. Though that’s not a good category, just extremists, let’s call them that," Matthews said.

In response, Trump tweeted on Tuesday:

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Matthews' remarks had been picked up by a number of conservative news sites, who took issue with the characterization. "Chris Matthews seems hell-bent on trying to blame the Boston Marathon bombing on a domestic terrorist, preferrably a conservative one," wrote Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters, for example, who also pointed to comments Matthews made about the attacks possibly being linked to Tax Day.

Here's the clip, via Newsbusters:

Chris Matthews is a statesman!

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 14:38:00 +0000

To his boss, Chris Matthews has become a statesman. His critics probably have other words.

The veteran MSNBC host raised his profile as much as any member of the television commentariat during the presidential campaign. His 5 p.m. "Hardball" show has seen viewership jump by 24 percent this year from 2011, 17 percent for the rerun two hours later.

Matthews symbolized MSNBC's growing comfort in being a liberal alternative to Fox News Channel. He engaged in an uncomfortable on-air confrontation with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, seemed nearly apoplectic when President Barack Obama flubbed his first debate and had to apologize for appearing grateful that Hurricane Sandy might have helped Obama's re-election effort.

With Keith Olbermann out of sight, Matthews essentially replaced him as the commentator that most annoyed conservative viewers.

"During the run-up to the Iraq War, he just became really, really partisan and became even more so when MSNBC decided to become the anti-Fox," said Geoff Dickens, who used to watch Matthews as a fan and now monitors him regularly as part of his job with the conservative Media Research Center.

12 for ’12: The year in politics

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000

To close out 2012, I’ve looked back at each month and selected one individual who loomed large in the news and whose story tells us something significant about the year in politics. This is an admittedly imprecise exercise. Not all months are created equally. There are some months when multiple people could have been chosen; in other months, the pickings were slim. And in some cases, the names I’ve chosen offer a reminder that in political journalism, what seems vitally important one day can seem trivial the next. Anyway, on to the list:

January: Newt Gingrich

To anyone who’d just been teleported from the year 1999, the scene in Charleston, South Carolina on the night of January 21 had to be impossible to fathom: There was Newt Gingrich, the man who’d been marched off the political stage by his own party after a disastrous four-year run as House Speaker, declaring victory in a Republican presidential primary. And not just any primary: South Carolina, a historically pivotal early contest. And not just a victory – an absolute landslide.

Gun Owners of America hints at armed revolt

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:30:00 +0000

Things got real ugly real quick during Chris Matthews' interview with Larry Pratt on MSNBC's "Hardball" this evening.

The reptilian executive director of Gun Owners of America, last seen telling gun control advocates "they have the blood of little children on their hands," argued that we are "less free without automatic rifles," and need to stay prepared.

Matthews, who loves nothing more than hurling himself through cracked-open doors like this, was all too happy to oblige with a "prepared for what?"

Pratt: "To take on our government. [And this] government has gone overboard." He continued that it's time to take action "when elections are stolen."

Does this mean that the Gun Owners of America's 300,000 members are preparing to revolt?

Chris Matthews attacks Michigan GOPer over Koch ties

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 01:46:00 +0000

Scott Hagerstrom, a worker for the Koch-backed Tea Party group Americans For Prosperity, appeared on Hardball on MSNBC to talk about the right-to-work protests in Michigan, and Chris Matthews let him have it over the group's ties to the billionaire conservatives.

“This is pretty much a union-gutting operation,” Matthews said about the state's legislation. “You work for the Koch brothers. They don’t like unions. Why are you working for them?" Hagerstrom replied: “I work for Americans for Prosperity. This is not about the Koch Brothers.”

Matthews fired back: “Who’s paying your salary?" Hagerstrom kept repeating: “I work Americans for Prosperity."

"What’s that?" Matthews asked.

Watch:

Alan Simpson: I hope Grover Norquist drowns in the bathtub

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 22:45:00 +0000

So this just happened on "Hardball" -- former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, of the Simpson-Bowles commission, essentially called for anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist to slip and fall in the tub.

Norquist has said he wants a government small enough that it can drown in the bathtub.

Said Simpson:

"So how do you deal with someone who comes to stop government? ... Grover wandering the earth in his white robe saying he wants to drown government in the bathtub. I hope he slips in there with it."

Chris Matthews, in a new record, was left speechless for several moments.

And that wasn't even the strangest thing Simpson said in the interview. In a discussion of taxes and how the middle-class would end up on the short end, Simpson posed this question: "Who gets diddled the most?"

UPDATE: BuzzFeed now has the video.

Must-see morning clip

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 14:25:00 +0000

Last night, actors and comedians like Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Seth Rogen and Jon Stewart came together for Comedy Central's autism benefit, "Night of Too Many Stars." Some stars auctioned off their dignity, while others sang to inspire Americans to donate to the cause. One of the night's best segments, though, was the helium fueled debate between "rivals" Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly:

h/t Mediaite

Do Democrats have a hack gap?

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 17:05:00 +0000

Is the normally smart and sober Kevin Drum trolling us?

In a blog post headlined "The Hack Gap Rears Its Ugly Head Yet Again," Drum posits that Obama's poor debate performance hurt him politically, mainly because media liberals criticized it harshly. Democrats are at a political disadvantage, he argues, because "conservatives outscore us considerably in the number of bloggers/pundits/columnists/talking heads who are willing to cheerfully say whatever it takes to advance the party line, no matter how ridiculous it is." Drum adds as evidence: "Can you even imagine Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh tearing their hair out over a weak debate performance? I can't." The post was retweeted by smart people on Twitter, provoking an interesting debate.

Drum blames feverish liberals, particularly on MSNBC, for driving the mainstream media to focus on Obama's bad showing. Had liberals not freaked out, Drum posits, "news reporters would then have simply reported the debate normally: Romney said X, Obama said Y, and both sides thought their guy did great." The public would have concluded it was just another debate. We'd have moved on.

Jack Welch still thinks the government did some fuzzy math

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 22:27:00 +0000

Prodigious firer of employees and former captain of industry Jack Welch ended his day with some conspiracy-mongering on "Hardball."

Chris Matthews’ post-debate rant

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 12:13:00 +0000

"I don't know what he was doing out there," Matthews said in his post-debate analysis. And then got angrier from there:

Wolf Blitzer can’t get enough cheesy grits

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:30:00 +0000

Cable news pundits might have the largest gap of anyone in the world between "think they're funny" and "actually funny."

Usually it's easy enough to roll your eyes when Lawrence O'Donnell -- as he did last night on MSNBC -- grabs onto a "three-way" reference to describe the Republican campaign, and then makes the joke again and again and again (hey, three times!), like a very naughty child who is very pleased with himself.

But then there's a meme like "cheesy grits" -- the new breakfast of choice for Mitt Romney when he's in the South. The race to air the awkward Romney clip the most times is still ongoing, as is the battle to make the most tortured metaphorical connection between cheesy grits and the former Massachusetts governor's failure to connect with Southern voters.

More embarrassing is the fact that each pundit who attempts the metaphor seems to think that he or she is super-clever and the first one with the idea -- proving that even the people who produce news 24 hours a day aren't watching this stuff.

Here are some of our favorite cheesy discussions of cheesy grits from coverage of the Alabama and Mississippi primaries. And yes, there are doozies from Wolf Blitzer and Chris Matthews.

The two Chris Matthews

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:01:00 +0000

The derisive, duck-snort "Ha!" that announces the Sideshow segment on "Hardball" might be Chris Matthews' actual laugh, or a sample of the Darrell Hammond "Saturday Night Live" impression. That's apt, because with Matthews, it is always hard to find the line between reality and parody.

If there are a half-dozen Brian Williams laughs, there are more Chris Matthews personalities -- and they were all on display during MSNBC's coverage of the New Hampshire primary last night. It was an enraged and often electrifying performance -- the over-the-top outraged citizen, the partisan happy warrior, the loony carnival barker who yearns to be taken seriously, the entertainer trying to convince us Chuck Todd or Michael Steele has an original insight, the Washington insider happy to scrape before the likes of Eugene Robinson and Jonathan Alter -- all at once.

Regular “Hardball” guests agree: Chris Matthews’ new JFK book is the best book

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:13:00 +0000

Chris Matthews is very proud of his new biography of John F. Kennedy. "It is actually the best book" on the subject of John F. Kennedy, according to Matthews. "People who know their business say it's the best book."

Who are these people? What business do they know? I am going to go out on a limb and say that these people know the business of political punditry. Part of the business of political punditry, like most jobs in media and publishing, is logrolling.

The back of Matthews' "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero" features advance praise from historian and frequent "Hardball" guest Doris Kearns Goodwin ("Chris Matthews is a masterful storyteller"); historian, writer and occasional "Hardball" guest Douglas Brinkley ("I give it ten gold stars!"); biographer and Aspen Institute president Walter Isaacson ("an awesome and delightful book"); and frequent MSNBC commentator and batty old aunt Peggy Noonan ("an insightful piece of work and a great time!" italics hers); My favorite blurb of all is from NBC anchor and amateur comedian Brian Williams: "Chris Matthews takes on a giant of American life—and triumphs." So in this book, Chris Matthews ... fights JFK? And beats him?