DC Trawler

Chris Matthews didn’t say Tea Partiers are violent, but he meant it at the time

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Good ol’ Chris was on The Morning Majority on WMAL in DC this morning, plugging whichever book he’s plugging. If you’re as fond of his voice as I am, you can just skip to the 6:07 mark. Listen as your pal and mine, Mary Katharine Ham, trips him up with some reality:

MKH: Chris, I watch your show a lot and have watched it a lot over the years. Especially, I remember back in 2009 during the health care townhalls, and you yourself and many of your guests were very worried about the rhetoric and possible violence that might break out at the health care townhalls. And that was a really big deal, it got a lot of national coverage… Now, when Occupy started out, I didn’t hear any of the same fears, even though the rhetoric was possibly more heightened among the signage of the Occupy kids. And in several cases, there have been dead people found at Occupy camps. There have been assaults that have happened, so…

CM: Yeah, did you ever watch me do a show positive about the Occupy? Did you ever see me tout them?

MKH: I don’t see quite the histrionics that I saw over the conservatives…

CM: You haven’t seen me advertise… you haven’t seen my show, you’ve got me confused with somebody else. I have never thought that the Occupy thing had a clear voice, had a purpose that I could grasp, except a generalized “99% to 1%” argument. I never really thought they knew how to talk. Now, the people on the other side–

MKH: But do you think that they posed a similar danger to what you were afraid of during the health care townhalls of 2009, which were pretty peaceful?

CM: To be honest with you, I don’t remember ever — me, Chris Matthews — ever saying a word about the townhalls on the right being violent.

MKH: Uh, you did. You referred to a man who facetiously referred to himself as a “right-wing terrorist,” you said that kind of language would push us to violence of the worst kind. You didn’t even want to imagine it.

CM: [pause] …Okay. Well, obviously I meant it at the time.

And then he filibusters and tries to change the argument and all his usual crap. But kudos to MKH for tricking Chris Matthews into being honest enough, just for a moment, to admit he’s a liar.

“I never said that, but I meant it at the time.” The liberal creed.

P.S. You’ll never guess who else is sick of Occupy.

P.P.S. Hey Chris, remember this?

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