If you’re a Democratic candidate for office and Chris Matthews is repulsed by the way you have handled a particular situation, you really ought to do some soul-searching.
On his Tuesday broadcast of “Hardball,” Matthews reacted with disgust toward New York City Democratic mayor hopeful Anthony Weiner, who acknowledged sending illicit messages to a 22-year-old woman after resigning from Congress.
Matthews raised the possibility that Weiner stopped sexting only because he was going to be a political candidate.
“I heard him make some news there by saying this behavior continued, quote, ‘after his resignation from Congress,'” Matthews said. “He also in that last little exchange there, the second-to-last exchange, he said it continued through last summer. And it seems to me that the ending of this behavior, this sexting of naked pictures of himself or whatever, continued right up until the time he decided to begin to run for mayor. In other words, the only reason he stopped doing this is because he was putting himself in a very precarious position electorally.”
“It seems to me the transition was from doing this type of behavior to doing a different kind of public exhibitionism, running for office. He just has changed his mode here, it seems to me,” he continued. “He’s not admitting any problem. He’s not admitting there’s something wrong with what he did. He kept saying ‘it was in the context of my marriage.’ ‘I may have had inappropriate communications,’ as if that’s some sort of a formality problem he has, as if there’s nothing really wrong with the guy. He’s basically saying, ‘there’s nothing wrong with me.'”
The “Hardball” host went on to point out credibility problems with Weiner and asked why any journalist should take him seriously. (RELATED: Democrats squirm as Weiner’s wife rushes to rescue him)
“What reporter or what journo would take that at face value? What journo would say, ‘He said more was coming,’ when the obvious statement being made was, ‘The problem existed up till the point when I resigned and there was a problem all over the place until then, more of that will come out,'” Matthews said. “Who would buy the fact that that he foretold that the problem would continue? Who would write that, even print it as a statement from this guy?”
Matthews was also particularly harsh on Weiner for having his wife Huma Abedin accompany him at the press conference.
“When you drag your spouse out before the public only for this — never before did he use her in this way, only for this, to cover his butt, drag out a very nice woman, a great public servant, very respected, and drags her out to stand there next to him — it makes Richard Nixon and Pat Nixon look like it was a royal marriage. This is — I don’t know, indecency is not the right word for it. Look at that nice woman trying to smile through all this hell.”