MSNBC host Chris Matthews really felt betrayed by President Barack Obama after the first debate last night . Throughout this article, we will now refer to him as heartbroken Chris Matthews.
Now, it should come as no surprise that many in the so-called left-wing media were disappointed with President Obama’s lackluster performance last night, but, while Obama advisers like David Axelrod or David Plouffe played spin and talking heads like Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz expressed their disappointment (though mostly over what issues didn’t come up), everyone seemed to keep their heads and professionally mask their personal disappointment. Except, of course, Hardball’ s heartbroken Chris Matthews, who really let his emotions do the talking.
“Well this tonight wasn’t an MSNBC debate, was it? It just wasn’t,” Matthews began oddly.
“Where was Obama tonight?” he crowed. “He should watch – well, not just Hardball , Rachel [Maddow], he should watch you, he should watch the Reverend Al [Sharpton], he should watch Lawrence [O’Donnell], he would learn something about this debate.”
Conversely:
“What was Romney doing tonight?” Matthews shouted, “He was winning! If he does five more of these nights, forget it! That’s my thought.”
Heartbroken Chris Matthews also suggested that a debate between MSNBC and Mitt Romney wouldn’t go so well for the GOP hopeful:
“We have our knives out. We go after the people and the facts,” heartbroken Chris Matthews claimed. “What was [Obama] doing tonight? He went in there disarmed!”
Not sure I care for that kind of violent rhetoric, and I’m not alone either. One commentator on Gawker had an interesting take: “what ever happend to the media saying that violent rhetoric was the reason for the shooting in Arizona?” I seem to remember something about that too … oh, here it is .
In any case, it is very noble for MSNBC to fall on the sword for President Obama, but you guys really just have to let him go up there by himself and do what he does and just figure out how to deal with it afterwards. I didn’t see a Fox News anchor passing Romney note-cards and jelly beans (to keep his sugar high going) from under the podium.
Here’s the video of heartbroken Chris Matthews:
[iframe src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/Z303YXnQDKU” width=”560? height=”315?]