MSNBC political analyst Anand Giridharadas criticized his colleague, network host Chris Matthews, after Matthews compared Sen. Bernie Sanders’s win in the Nevada caucuses to the Nazi invasion of France.
Giridharadas appeared on AM Joy Sunday morning to discuss a recent opinion piece he wrote in the New York Times in which he criticized former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s presidential bid while addressing the larger issue of billionaires in the race. He then broached the “wake-up moment for the American power establishment” through Sanders’s success in the Nevada contest over the weekend.
“Why is Chris Matthews on this air talking about the victory [of] Bernie Sanders, who had kin murdered in the Holocaust, analogizing it to the Nazi conquest of France?” Giridharadas said. “People stuck in an old way of thinking, in 20th century thinking are missing what is going on. It is time for all of us to step up, rethink the dawn of what may be, frankly, a new era in American life.”
On Saturday, Matthews likened the self-proclaimed socialist’s decisive victory in Nevada’s caucuses to the Nazi’s victory over France in World War II.
“I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940,” Matthews said during MSNBC’s coverage of the caucuses. “And the general, Reynaud, calls up Churchill and says, ‘It’s over.’ And Churchill says, ‘How can that be? You’ve got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?’ He said, ‘It’s over.'”
Matthews’s comments, which spurred calls for his resignation, are the latest in a series of anti-Sanders commentary he’s made on the air.
Matthews recently accused Sanders of being “full of it,” arguing that he’d be a “miserable president” if the senator got elected. Matthews also predicted that Sanders would lose 49 states if he went up against President Trump in the general election.
The Vermont senator reportedly berated MSNBC executives last week for what he perceived to be unfair treatment.
