MSNBC host Chris Matthews has really been on a roll lately.
As he was interviewing Jaime Harrison, a Democratic candidate who seeks to unseat Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on Friday night, Matthews saw live footage of Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) with Graham at President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in South Carolina and somehow believed the man he was talking to in real time was the same person he was seeing at that rally.
“Jaime, I see you next to the guy you’re going to beat right there, maybe, maybe, maybe, Lindsey Graham,” Matthews said to Harrison, who was being interviewed remotely.
“That’s Tim Scott,” Trymaine Lee, an MSNBC reporter, told the host.
“Jaime?” Matthews asked confusedly, prompting MSNBC contributor Adrienne Elrod to correct him again.
“Who’s that?” Matthews inquired before finally catching on when he was told for the third time that the man he was seeing was Scott.
“Oh, it’s the other senator, Tim Scott,” the host said. “What am I saying? Big mistake.”
He then apologized to Harrison, saying “Mistaken identity, sir, sorry.”
Matthews’ questionable behavior has been on full display in recent days; On Tuesday, he interrogated 2020 candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for believing the woman who accused 2020 rival Michael Bloomberg of telling her to get an abortion when she was his employee.
“I just want to make sure you’re clear about this: You’re confident of your accusation?” Matthews asked Warren for the fifth time, apparently siding with Bloomberg, who has denied making the remark.
Several days after the interview with Warren, GQ Magazine writer Laura Bassett revealed that Chris Matthews was the unnamed “famous broadcast journalist” at the center of her 2017 HuffPost column on how said journalist had sexually harassed her right before he was about to interview her on air.
In her latest column, Bassett cited Matthews’ skeptical attitude toward the female employee’s allegation as the reason for exposing him as her harasser.
“There was no reason for him to harp on its veracity, except, perhaps, that he himself has made so many sexist comments over the years that he has a vested interest in Bloomberg being let off the hook,” Bassett wrote.
And last week, Matthews compared Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) big win in the Nevada caucus to the Nazis’ takeover of France during World War II, for which the host apologized on Monday.
Watch Matthews’ interview with Harrison below:
MSNBC host Chris Matthews confuses Tim Scott with Jaime Harrison, Lindsey Graham's challenger. pic.twitter.com/ydDzvHG6wU
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) February 29, 2020
