Politics

Chris Matthews on debt deal: ‘It was a thug attacking a victim. It was a mugging’

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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After Vice President Joe Biden reportedly likened the congressional Republicans negotiating tactics to those of “terrorists,” other Democrats have been reluctant to follow in his track and have substituted “hostage taker” in its place. But “Hardball” host Chris Matthews has his own metaphor.

On his Tuesday show on MSNBC, Matthews said the Republicans were guilty of a crime: A mugging.

“Let me finish tonight with this bad experience we’ve all just been through,” Matthews said. “What we saw — what I saw, at least, was one guy with a knife and the other trying to avoid being cut. It was a thug attacking a victim. It was a mugging.”

The “Hardball” host warned this will happen again, now that the GOP has seen it work to achieve what it wanted.

“Now, the good news, ‘the relief’ is a better word I suppose that the victim did get through it,” he continued. “The bad news is the mugger got what he wanted — he got the wallet. I put to you the most important question of the week, of the month, of the year, of our time — is there any doubt that he, the mugger, will try it again? Not a whit.”

“This morning the Republican leader of the Senate declared his intention to name not a single member of a new special joint committee to make the second cut in the debt who is open to a tax or even a revenue increase.”

And Matthews explained it will continue as long as President Barack Obama allows it.

“So the mugging continues again and again and again,” Matthews continued. “The people who perpetrated this assault on the president will come back to do it again.”