CSI: American Carnage (Friday, November 1, 2019)
WASHINGTON – Dufus. Let’s play Hardball. I’m Chris Matthews in Washington. A powerful message tonight and the president, along with the Republicans who have tied their ankles to his anchor, got what they wished for. But it’s wrapping something deeply dangerous, and heavy. If they toss that anchor, they’ll find that it sinks. If they don’t, they’ll find that they are adrift, tethered to Captain Ahab. That’s not where you want to be. I’m joined by Michael Steel, former spokesman for House speaker John Boehner and an expert on writer Herman Melville, a great American from back in the day, as the kids say now. Michael, I’m not gonna call you Ishmael, ha ha, but what’s with these guys? Are they willing to put a gun to their own heads, the collective heads, all of em, and pull the trigger for the President? I mean, what is going on here? First they want the open hearings, they yell and scream, they talk about Schiff holding his hearings in the bunker, I mean, the bunker – it sounds like Adolf and Eva, and that is not gonna play well. You know as well as I do, Schiff is of the Jewish faith. Are they saying he’s a closet Hitler? Are they suggesting he should drink some cyanide? Your thoughts. Michael says, That’s exactly right Chris. It is a damp, drizzly November, remember, and maybe even more importantly…. Chris jumps in. He says, What could be more important than protecting our democracy? My dear friend, Bobby Kennedy, was the AG, like this guy Barr, what’s with him? He’s selling out the people, the voters, the lunch-box guys from Scranton, where I didn’t grow up, but I know really well, like those suburbs outside of Philly with the moms who are so turned off by the grabbing of the privates and the name calling, and maybe they can’t keep all the Russian names straight, but they know they don’t like it. Bobby loved the people. He knew the names. He was out there in the sorghum and the cotton and he dedicated his life, his life! to protecting the franchise, that’s what you call it, the franchise, and he went down into those shacks in Mississippi and he saw the photographs taped sadly to the unpainted walls of the shacks, the Pope, god bless him, and Doctor King, and Bobby’s fallen brother, Jack, now there was a great president, and Obama was a great president, and he was African American, just like black people all over this country, and Bobby understood that the only point of this great country, whether you’re living in that shack in the Delta or you’re in one of those great suburbs around Philly, and I know them well, great places, the only point was to make your way to the voting booth and pull the lever and that way you participate in your own greatness, Michael. Hold on. We’ll be back after this.