Chris Matthews to Vanity Fair‘s Joe Hagan on why he resigned early last month: “I didn’t argue about it, I didn’t deny it. I accepted the credibility of the complaint in the article. I didn’t want to challenge the person that made the complaint and wrote the article. I thought it was very credible and certainly within the person’s rights to write that article, of course. That was highly justified. Basically, as I said, to repeat myself, it’s inappropriate in the workplace to compliment somebody on their appearance, this is in the makeup chair, and I did it.”
Key Matthews excerpt: “On the matter of Biden’s vice-presidential pick, Matthews thinks Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is the ideal choice for helping Biden grab the center, especially in the Midwest.
“‘It looks like she could be president if necessary, but not determined to have the office right away kind of thing,’ he said. ‘It’s very tricky when you have a president who will be in his 80s [for] half his first term or his only term perhaps. To pick the other person that’s too ready to be president, you want somebody who’s willing to be vice president for a while. Be vice president and not look like the guy’s a lame duck and I’m ready to take over.’
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“At the same time, Matthews sees the recent leadership of state governors like Gretchen Whitmer, Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom as a preview of what national leadership in a post-Trump era might look like. ‘I think that’s a pretty good indicator what normal will look like when we get back to it,’ he said. ‘One of these governors may be the next president.'”
Vanity Fair‘s Joe Hagan: “[To me life is currently feeling like] Groundhog Day as written by Dostoevsky…we’re in a Russian novel that’s never going to end.”
Before introducing his Matthews discussion (which doesn’t happen for a good 10 or 12 minutes), Hagan sounds like a quivering p.c. candy-ass when he says he initially felt a little funny about even talking to Matthews, given his controversial canning from MSNBC for making a sexist comment to a Hardball guest in a dressing room, and for being generationally out-of-synch with the New Stalinism.
Hagan is right. Matthews is generally out of synch and he did say the wrong thing to the guest in question. But for decades he was a hotshot talk-show host, a veteran political news guy and Washington insider (and still is the latter two)…and Hagan feels funny about even talking to him?
