NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – MSNBC ‘Hardball’ host Chris Matthews is facing a backlash after he compared Bernie Sanders’ win in the Nevada caucuses to Nazi Germany’s invasion of France during World War II.
Matthews said the race was “pretty much over” as news outlets began calling it for Sanders Saturday night.
“I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940,” Matthews said live on MSNBC. “And the general calls up Churchill and says, ‘It’s over,’ and Churchill says, ‘How can it be? You got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?’ He said, ‘It’s over.’”
The comments immediately sparked a backlash on social media, with Chris Matthews’ name trending on Twitter throughout the night along with the hashtag #FireChrisMatthews.
“Never thought part of my job would be pleading with a national news network to stop likening the campaign of a jewish presidential candidate whose family was wiped out by the nazis to the third reich,” Sanders campaign communications director Mike Casca tweeted.
“Chris Matthews just compared Bernie’s victory in Nevada to the Nazis taking control of France. Incredibly offensive thing to say about someone from a family of holocaust survivors,” Justice Democrats tweeted.
Matthews made waves after the New Hampshire primary this month when he appeared to connect Sanders to socialism and theoretical “executions in Central Park.”
“I have my own views of the word socialist and I’ll be glad to share them with you in private and they go back to the early 1950s,” Matthews said during a roundtable about the New Hampshire primary aired on MSNBC.
“I believe if (Fidel) Castro and the reds had won the Cold War there would have been executions in Central Park and I might have been one of the ones getting executed. And certain other people would be there cheering,” he said.