Even after all these years, President Barack Obama still gives Chris Matthews that special tingle.
The liberal MSNBC host, who (in)famously said during the 2008 presidential primary that Obama’s speeches sent a “thrill going up my leg,” admits that he occasionally still gets that peculiar sensation.
“Everybody makes fun of me for the ‘thrill up the leg,'” Matthews told The New Yorker magazine for a profile on the state of MSNBC. “I’ve got to tell you something: it still works, once in a while — when [Obama] talks about our country, when he talks about race.”
Last year, Matthews expressed irritation over conservative critics dredging up his past comment.
“I’m an untraditional person but I have traditional values and I love the country and I said so,” he told C-SPAN’s Steve Scully at The Cable Show convention in Boston. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said so because I’ve given a lot of jackasses the chance to talk about it. So, I hope you feel satisfied that you raised the most obvious question that is raised by every horse’s ass right winger that I ever bump into.”