Chris Matthews recent diatribe against Bernie Sanders is far from a “freak out.” In fact, it doesn’t go far enough.
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Chris Matthews, the host of Hardball on MSNBC (the only half way decent show on MSNBC) had what a lot of Bernie supporters are calling a “freak out” after the most recent Democratic debate.
What did he do? He dared to not show support for the socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.
Matthews is slightly left of center, make no mistake. He’s commonly called the most right-wing anchorman on MSNBC (in the same way Alan Colmes use to be the most left-wing person on Fox News), but that’s not saying much.
The only time Hardball has been accused of bias against a Democrat was in 2008 when Matthews attacked Hillary Clinton a number of times, and that was only because of his support for Barack Obama.
Matthews specifically said there would have been “executions in Central Park” if “[Fidel] Castro and the Reds” had won the Cold War. Considering Che Guevara said “I don’t need proof to execute a man, I only need proof that it’s necessary to execute him,” I wouldn’t call Matthews’s concern unreasonable.
And this isn’t the first time Bernie has been compared to Castro. Rep. Peter Smith, the first man Bernie won against while running for the House back in 1990, did this way back in the day.
During his rant, Matthews makes it clear he supports Obamacare, a public option for healthcare, and the Denmark model. Hardly the right-wing lunatic the Bernie guys would have you believe at the moment. This isn’t like the time Sean Hannity called AOC’s ideas “down right scary.”
Matthews is, if anything, more generous than he should be, saying he doesn’t know what side Bernie was on during the Cold War. Another MSNBC panelist (who I don’t know the name of, sorry) says that he couldn’t have praised communist regimes, because footage of it would exist already.
That would be great and all, except footage already exists of Bernie praising authoritarian communists. Reason compiled nearly sixteen-minutes of his doing just that.
These include: The Sandinista leaders of Nicaragua (which he showed support for, instead of just being against the Reagan administration funding the Contras) in 1985, the USSR as late as 1988, and Fidel Castro-wait, wasn’t Matthews mocked for mentioning him?-as late as 1989.
Let’s also talk about his foreign record. In 2015, Sanders supported normalizing relations with Communist Cuba, although that is a lax on his previous stance, all things considered. He was strongly against the invasion of Iraq, ran by left-wing dictator Saddam Hussein both in 2003 and when he invaded Kuwait. He supports diplomacy against Assad, who is also a member of a socialist party in Syria.
While Bernie’s supporters say this is because he’s anti-war, the record shows that to be wrong. If it’s just that he’s against war, why did he vote in favor of authorizing force in Afghanistan in 2001? Why did he support NATO bombing Yugoslavia in 1999? (In fact, his arguments made in favor of what Clinton did in Kosovo were near identical to the arguments Bush and others used a decade later.) Why has Sanders supported sanctions against Russia time and time again?
In fact, it seems like the only time Sanders has been against war is when it’s against a communist regime.
If a Sanders presidency results not just in a socialist economy but the support of communism abroad, then I would be even more worried than Matthews.
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Ephrom Josine is a libertarian political blogger/commentator, and a frequent contributor to The Liberty Hawk. In 2019, he published his first book Ramblings Of A Mad Man: Life As An Anarchist. You can find him on Twitter @EphromJosine1, writing near-daily on Medium @ephromjosine or weekly on Freedom First Blog.