Never mind the mountains of evidence and numerous admissions by top Internal Revenue Service officials – the improper targeting of conservative organizations by the nation’s tax-collecting agency is “phony” according to MSNBC host Chris Matthews.
The liberal talk show host attempted to debunk the scandal during a discussion with Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen and The Washington Post‘s Nia-Malika Henderson on “Hardball with Chris Matthews” Wednesday night.
“Look, [House Oversight Committee Chairman] Darrel Issa’s operating in a totally fact-free zone,” Van Hollen, a Democrat and the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, told Matthews. “What we know now is the IRS was looking at political groups both on the right and the left.”
Earlier in the day, Van Hollen signed on as the lead plaintiff in a case challenging the IRS’s interpretation of a law that governs tax-exemption eligibility for social welfare groups. Van Hollen will be joined in the suit by campaign finance watchdogs Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center and Public Citizen.
Matthews then discussed the ‘phony’ scandal with Henderson, where he referenced a CNN poll from June which found that Americans were just as likely to believe that the White House ordered the targeting of political groups as they were to believe that the agency acted alone in the targeting. (Of course, the unabashed liberal failed to realize that by discussing a poll in which 96 percent of Americans believe the scandal was real goes against the entire premise of his argument.)
Matthews isn’t the first – or the last – MSNBC pundit to claim the IRS scandal was a bunch of hooey. Shortly after the ‘phony’ scandal broke, the Rev. Al Sharpton also claimed that the IRS scandal – along with the cover-up of information surrounding the bombing at the Libyan Embassy in Benghazi last September – was just overhyped by Republicans who aren’t able to “scandal the truth.”
Watch the full segment below.
