On the same night he apologized [1] for making a horribly inappropriate comment about Hurricane Sandy, Chris Matthews on Wednesday had Bill Maher on Hardball to compare Karl Rove and Republicans to Nazis. After Matthews wondered about Rove's erroneous predictions, the liberal comic mocked, "It was a little Hitler's bunker, wasn't it? I wanted to rush in with a cyanide capsule there. I thought he was going to say, 'I don't want to live in a world without national socialism.'" [MP3 audio here [2].]
Matthews himself got into the act, comparing Rove to Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, a former propaganda henchman for Saddam Hussein: "Is [Rove] the Baghdad Bob [3] of the 2012 election, the last guy to admit something's new and something bad is happening?" Again, this is the same program in which the MSNBC anchor apologized for his "terrible" election night comment: "I'm so glad we had that storm last week. [4]"
Later in the same segment, Matthews quizzed Maher as to how Mitt Romney took the loss. The comedian tried more Nazi humor: "Yes, Mein Fuhrer, you have 12 divisions on the eastern front. I mean, until they actually heard the artillery–' I guess I should stop with the Hitler analogies."
The cable host meekly responded, "I think Hitler [jokes] never work myself. It never works. You know that."
A transcript of the November 7 exchange follows:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: So, Bill, Karl Rove, I think, has offered some material. Is he the Baghdad Bob of the 2012 election, the last guy to admit something's new and something bad is happening?
BILL MAHER: It was a little Hitler's bunker, wasn't it? I wanted to rush in with a cyanide capsule there. I thought he was going to say, "I don't want to live in a world without national socialism." "Okay, Mrs. Goebbels." But, you know, I think it gets to a bigger point there, Chris, which is that Republicans have to start getting their information from a better source than Fox News. I'm not kidding about this. I think this really screws them up. You know, all year long we have had this segment on our program called "dispatches from the bubble." We actually had a bubble made and put a Republican in it. And you know, with the Rasmussen poll, they actually closed the last hole in the bubble. Now they have their own polling. They believed it right up until the end. They were shocked by this election. They have to somehow fix the way they get information, because they only talk to each other and they don't know what's going on in the real world. And they were rudely awakened last night.
MATTHEWS: What do you think it was like to be in that bubble with Mitt Romney in that time– I call it the knockout in the sixth round. All of a sudden, mid-evening, east coast time last night, it just started to go in that direction, the Democratic direction, just so powerfully. What do you think they were telling him when he's running around, saying "This isn't supposed to happen, you guys were told me I was winning this thing?"
MAHER: I mean, I think they were still saying, "Yes, Mein Fuhrer, you have 12 divisions on the eastern front. I mean, until they actually heard the artillery–" I guess I should stop with the Hitler analogies.
MATTHEWS: I think Hitler never works myself. It never works. You know that.
-- Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here [5] to follow him on Twitter.