MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews compared the harshness of the Las Vegas Democratic debate to an old boxing match from the 1950s after the candidates took repeated shots at one another.
Matthews, 74, was on the network’s post-debate coverage Wednesday night when he discussed the brutality of the attacks from some candidates. He began by saying the event was unlike anything he’s ever seen, calling it the equivalent of the “Roman Colosseum” before he began dropping the boxing reference.
“It was boxing in the 1950s. You wait for the other guy, Carmen Basilio, or someone like that, to get a cut over their eye, and then you keep punching the cut over their eye over and over and over again. That’s what they did to Bloomberg. That’s what Elizabeth Warren did to Michael Bloomberg,” he explained. “She knew his weakness was the [nondisclosure agreements], and she kept punching the spot, and it kept bleeding and bleeding. He had no way to stop it.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, as Matthews referenced, repeatedly hammered at Bloomberg specifically for his treatment of women and the litany of sexual harassment claims and settlements that have been made.
In addition to calling the Massachusetts senator a “fighter” who “hit every other single candidate,” Matthews also referenced former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s strategy of hitting Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota for not remembering the name of the Mexican president. He said of Buttigieg’s attacks, “He kept punching her weak spot, her wound over and over again.”
“It was the boxing match in which nobody pulled back and said, ‘Enough,'” he added. “And nobody clenched. Everybody kept fighting. I’ll tell you, I think Trump probably likes the look of it. I’m not sure he’s right. On first view, it looks awful and bloody, everybody attacking each other. Circular firing squad, all those cliches. But maybe what we saw was a lot of passion.”
