Furious Chris Matthews Explodes: Cory Booker 'Betrayed' and 'Sabotaged' Obama

A furious Chris Matthews on Monday railed against Cory Booker for his "betrayal" and "sabotage" of fellow Democrat Barack Obama. A bewildered Matthews couldn't understand why the Newark mayor would "trash" the President.

Howling over Booker's break from party loyalty, Matthews snarled, "... I think [this] was an act of sabotage. Whatever the intention was, [Booker] was trashing the entire Obama campaign of the summer." The Hardball host then played a clip of Obama "trying to defend himself against what looked like something like a betrayal." [MP3 audio here.]

(Matthews was so upset he led a second, live at 7 PM EDT edition of Hardball, with multiple fresh segments on the same topic.)

Talking to liberals David Corn and Howard Fineman during the 5 PM EDT hour, Matthews attempted to deride Booker as some sort of heretic: "On comes Cory Booker, supposedly a surrogate for President Obama, comes on the show listed as a surrogate, points out he's got surrogate notes in his hand, said he's been working as a surrogate and then trashes the entire campaign..."

The cable anchor marveled at the "astounding" nature of the mayor's comments, ridiculously asserting, "I never saw anything like this that we saw on Meet the Press yesterday."

Of course, such things happen to Republicans all the time. In fact, MSNBC has a three hour show where Republicans are brought on to trash other Republicans. It's called Morning Joe. The only difference is that Matthews and other journalists applaud those acts of "betrayal."

A transcript of the comments can be found below:

Hardball
05/21/12
5:04 PM EDT

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I want you to just hold while we watch the President now do this very intricate response to what the mayor of Newark said yesterday, which I think was an act of sabotage. Whatever the intention was, he was trashing the entire Obama campaign of the summer in one appearance on Meet the Press. Let's watch the President today trying to defend himself against what looked like something like a betrayal. Let's watch.

...

MATTHEWS: Let's recap here for our audience who didn't watch Meet the Press, David, before you come back here. I watched Meet the Press yesterday and I watched Cory Booker, a very impressive fellow with an incredible education, include Stanford behind him. And he went on television and basically said the President's entire campaign, which is to go after Bain Capital, to go after Mitt Romney, his presumed opponent in this election, attacking Romney for destroying jobs as head of Bain Capital. He said he was basically a job destroyer. They've been putting on one ad after another making this point.  

On comes Cory Booker, supposedly a surrogate for President Obama, comes on the show listed as a surrogate, points out he's got surrogate notes in his hand, said he's been working as a surrogate and then trashes the entire campaign by saying, "There's really nothing wrong with private capital. Nothing wrong with Bain Capital. I fire people. He fires people. So what? This is all good for American capitalism." It was an incredible 180 on everything the President stands for in this campaign. The President just went on and tried to deal with it right now. But, I'll tell you, it was astounding that they have listed this guy as a surrogate when he is intending to go on television and to trash everything Obama is making the case for. Now, your thoughts, David? I never saw anything like this that we saw on Meet the Press yesterday.

-- Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.

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