Supplemental: Matthews on Clinton, last night and back then!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2015

His fraudulence knows no bounds: At times, the fraudulence of our "cable news" stars seems to defy comprehension.

One such moment occurred last night on the relentlessly fraudulent cable non-news program, Hardball.

Chris Matthews interviewed Hillary Clinton at substantial length. At one point, he recalled the way Clinton's original run for the Senate took form in 1999.

How to put this? As Matthews recalled the events of that day, his fraudulence ranneth over. Pay special attention to the passage we've highlighted near the end:

MATTHEWS (1/5/16): Back when you had all the difficulty in the second administration of President Clinton, your husband, and you had a difficult situation you had to go through—and you went through it, and I think you were completely stunned by it initially, and then you had to deal with it as you became aware of what was going on.

And what did you do? You didn't cry. You didn't go away and say, "Gee, whiz, this is terrible, why am I going through this?" What you did is you went out and you acted like a champion for Democrats. You went around the country campaigning like mad. You were the real banner carrier for the Democratic Party in '98.

And something interesting happened. An epiphany happened. Somehow, out there campaigning in New York for Chuck Schumer and other people, you said something to yourself. You said, "You know what? Something good can come out of this for me. I can become a hero to people."

And you ran for the Senate from New York, when a lot of people were critics of you, would have loved you to have fallen on your face. They would have eaten it up if you'd gone down in a ditch up in New York and lost. Because at the time, you were running against Rudy, who looked unbeatable.

CLINTON: That's right. That's right.

MATTHEWS: And you had the guts to go out there. What made you do it? Because there's a lot of women watching right now. Half my viewers are women. And they want to hear what`s it take for a woman to just rise out of a situation which is pretty bad and come out of it and say, "You know what? I can rise to this occasion." How did you do it?

Almost everything Matthews says in that highlighted passage is accurate. Here's what he didn't say:

No one trashed Clinton, and pimped for Rudy, any more relentlessly than he, Chris Matthews, did. Let's recall what happened:

On Friday, December 3, 1999, Clinton named a campaign manager for her race against Giuliani (who never "looked unbeatable"). Matthews responded by trashing Clinton on his next two programs in long, sustained rants which were utterly crazy even by his own astonishing standards at that time.

Matthews' attacks on Candidate Clinton were disgraceful, crazed, appalling. On Monday, December 6, 1999, his attacks on "Evita" made so little sense that he left his guest, Clinton biographer Gail Sheehy, essentially slack-jawed.

Matthews' performance that night was just this side of insane. In this passage, he criticized Clinton for her attempt, during Bill Clinton's first term, to create a system of universal health care:

MATTHEWS (12/6/99): First of all, Hillary Clinton got the message wrong. The American people want to have health care for people who work for a living. Working families should get a good wage and they should get health care as part of a living income.

She said, "I'm going to give you universal coverage. I want to give every man who gets into this country, legally or illegally, free health care, and they're going to have to thank me for it, and bring flowers to me like I'm Evita." That's different than giving people workers' rights, or giving them what they go out and work for a living for, including health care.

She didn't want to sell it as a workers' benefit. She wanted to sell it as socialism, because then she could get credit for it. She and the government, like Eleanor Roosevelt, her hero.

SHEEHY: Well, I don't think she wanted to sell it as socialism...

"Evita" was selling us socialism so she could pretend to be Eleanor Roosevelt! Perhaps you can see how strange it is when Matthews describes those days in the way he did last night.

Matthews' performance with Sheehy was just this side of insane. Overall, his manifest loathing for Candidate Clinton exceeded that of any other major figure in the national "press corps."

How crazy did that night's discussion get? In this passage, he crazily ranted about Clinton's horrible conduct on the bunny slope:

MATTHEWS: You talk in a nice way about how Hillary never wanted to learn to ski. Now, I learned to ski at a relatively late age, and I love it. But it does involve falling. And you point out in your book that she doesn't like to fall. And therefore—

I mean, just falling by—the physical act of falling in front of other people, where they see you fall—yet she was willing to take on a seventh of the American economy with no economics training, and say that she was going to personally redefine the economic system with regard to health. How can she be afraid to fall on her butt on the bunny slope, and yet willing to jeopardize the health security of the American people without a blink?

[...]

SHEEHY: Wait a second! Let me just ask you one thing. I know you don't like Hillary Clinton—

MATTHEWS: No, that's not true. That's not the relevant point. I'm asking you why did she—why was she afraid to fall on soft snow on a bunny slope, but wasn't afraid of bringing down the health security of 260 million Americans? That's what I don't understand.

Actually, no. We aren't making this up!

In early December 1999, Matthews was savagely attacking Candidate Gore, as he did for two years in service to his zillionaire owner, Jack Welch. Despite that pre-existing mission, he set two nights aside at this time to kick the ass of "Evita."

We've documented the lunacy of those two programs in some detail. We'll give you links to those reports below.

But how fake, how phony, is the discourse you see on your "cable news" channels? How fraudulent are the seven-figure TV stars who entertain and fluff you each night?

Just review what Matthews said last night, then review his crazy conduct during the period he was discussing. "A lot of people were critics of you, " Matthews said to Clinton last night. "They would have eaten it up if you'd gone down in a ditch up in New York and lost. Because at the time, you were running against Rudy."

Matthews was talking about himself! No one pimped Rudy any harder. No one trashed Clinton in a crazier way than he did.

Matthews, of course, is a fraud, a confection. None of your favorite liberal stars will ever tell you that.

Visit our incomparable archives: We've memorialized Matthews' crazy conduct from December 1999 at various times in the past. His disastrous attacks on Candidate Gore caused the most harm to the world. But his attacks on the newly declared Candidate Clinton were every bit as crazy.

To survey his attacks on Clinton from that time, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/8/14. For an earlier account which is somewhat more detailed, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/27/08.

Matthews is fraudulent to the core. Of one thing, though, you can feel quite certain:

Your favorite, highest paid "liberal" stars will never discuss that fact!