Last Updated on February 22, 2020
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, a vocal critic of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has now compared the Sanders campaign as Nazi-like, using similar phrasing to his 2017 condemnation of President Trump’s inaugural address.
As it began to become clear that Sanders gained a decisive victory in the Democratic Party’s Nevada caucus, Matthews began bemoaning the idea of Sanders becoming the nominee, and went as far as to compare his recent electoral wins to the rise of Hitler.
“It looks like Bernie sanders is hard to beat right now,” said Matthews. “They’re sitting on so much oppo research on Bernie, what he’s said in the past about world affairs, how far left he is,”
“They’re gonna kill him,” he continued. “I think it’s a little late to stop him, and I think that’s the problem.”
Matthews noted that the Sanders campaign has won every state’s popular vote, while the majority of delegates in Iowa went to South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
“By the way if you look at the pattern it’s dynamic. Bernie won the popular vote in Iowa, he won it again in New Hampshire, and it looks like he’s gonna win it here when they finally get a vote,” Matthews added.
“Bernie’s been winning consistently, and I think it’s mathematically understandable.”
At this point in the brief three minute exchange, Matthews then likened Sanders’ victory in Iowa to the Nazi invasion of France in 1940.
“I was reading last night Brian, I know you’re a history guy too,” said Matthews. “I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940, and the General Renou calls up Churchill and says it’s over.”
“And Churchill says how can it be? You’ve got the greatest army in Europe? He said it’s over.”
Matthews added, “So I had that suppressed feeling.”
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews likens Sanders victory in Nevada to Nazi Germany overrunning France in 1940: “It’s too late to stop him … it’s over” pic.twitter.com/6GJetLoDkq
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 22, 2020
Earlier in the day, Matthews expressed concern over what a Democratic Party led by Sanders would mean for the party’s future.
“I’m wondering whether the Democratic moderates want Bernie Sanders to be president,” said Matthews. “I mean that’s maybe too exciting of a question to raise, they don’t like Trump at all.”
He added, “Do they want Bernie Sanders to take over the Democratic Party in perpetuity? I mean he takes it over, he sets the direction for the future of the party. Maybe they want four years and they put in a Democrat they like?”
Matthews, of course, claimed President Trump’s inaugural address was “Hitlerian” in its content, comparing the nascent president to the Third Reich.
“When he said today, ‘America First,’ it was not just the racial, I shouldn’t say racial, the Hitlerian background to it,” Matthews said in 2017.
“I kept thinking, ‘What is Teresa May think of this when she picks up the papers,” Matthews continued. “What if you’re Putin, you’re probably pounding the table and saying ‘That’s what I’ve been saying! Russia First.'”
