Chris Matthews on Obama handling of Egypt: ‘I feel ashamed as an American, the way we’re doing this’

If you can get MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to deviate from the liberal talking points or take a break from his Michele Bachmann obsession, he has demonstrated he can say something insightful.

On Friday’s “Morning Joe,” the left-leaning host of “Hardball” went on something of a rant about how President Barack Obama’s State Department has handled the turmoil in Egypt, specifically its treatment of Egyptian Hosni Mubarak, a longtime U.S. ally.

“Well, we should have known this,” Matthews said. “And my second point of view about this, in friendship, you ought to know what’s going on. He’s 83 in May, I believe. He’s getting old. We should have prepared this 10, 20 years ago. In friendship, where was the State Department? Don’t we have hundreds of people sitting over there in Foggy Bottom with no other job except to know what’s going on in Egypt, with no other job but to know the culture and politics in that country and to understand the potential leaders and factions that might offset the Muslim Brotherhood? What are they doing?”

He also cast blame on the public face the administration had put forward with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He explained she hasn’t given Americans anything new from what we don’t already know and no sense of a direction in American policy with Egypt.

“I watched Secretary Clinton today,” Matthews said. “I don’t get anything. I don’t see anything except two and two are four. I keep waiting for five. Show me you’ve done your jobs over there and I just wish in our friendship, we should have been smart and I think we don’t have a plan B. I mean, the guy’s almost 83. Where was our plan?”

Watch:

According to Matthews, there are a bunch of Middle Eastern leaders wanting their oldest child to be their successor, as is the case with Mubark and his son Gamal – something that should have been easy to pick up on.

“His plan was Gamal,” Matthews said. “I was talking to Secretary [Colin] Powell a while ago,” he continued. “I hope it wasn’t off the record because he said it rather clearly. I said, what do you think of Mubarak? He said, he’s like every other leader in the world over there. All they want their oldest kid to be their successor, whether it’s Sadi Kadafi or Bashar Assaad. They call themselves Bathist monarchists, whatever Islamists. It all comes down to the same thing. They want their oldest kid to replace them.”