After facing swift rebuke and calls to resign, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews opened the Monday segment of Hardball with an apology to Sen. Bernie Sanders. The host wanted to “say something quite important and personal” as he put it to viewers. During MSNBC’s caucus coverage on Saturday evening, Matthews, as a reminder, compared the Vermont senator’s win in Nevada’s Democratic caucus to Nazis invading France in World War II. Unsurprisingly, people were horrified, and the backlash came fast.
Here is the original clip from Matthews.
"I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940, and the general, Reynaud, calls up Churchill and says, 'It's over.' And Churchill says, 'How can that be? You've got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?' He said, 'It's over,'" Matthews said to live viewers.
An offensive, shocking remark, especially considering that Sanders is Jewish.
Communications Director for Sanders Mike Casca, among others, addressed the video on Twitter:
And here is his apology.
“As I watched the one-sided results of Saturday's Democratic caucus in Nevada, I reached for a historic analogy and used a bad one,” Matthews stated. To Sanders specifically, Matthews continued, “I’m sorry for comparing anything from that tragic era in which so many suffered, especially the Jewish people, to an electorate result in which you were the well-deserved winner. This is going to be a hard-fought, heated campaign of ideas.”
Matthews pledged to “strive to do a better job myself of elevating the political discussion.”