Latest news with #ChrisMatthews
Sky News AU
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
Ex-MSNBC host praises Donald Trump's ‘strength' and his connection to Americans
Former MSNBC host Chris Matthews has showered US President Donald Trump with praise despite recent negative polling. On Saturday, Matthews appeared on Charlie Rose's YouTube channel, where he commended Trump's cultural connection to Americans. 'He's very good at knowing your condition, your worries, your insecurities. I mean, he'd be a great bully in a grade school, a Catholic high school or grade school. I mean, he'd be the scariest bully because he'd know everybody's weakness,' he said. 'But he's really good at the moment. I mean, he's out there watching television and keeping up, and 'Is this the right thing to do, what we're doing right now?''
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Former MSNBC anchor makes startling admission about Trump despite recent polling
Ex-MSNBC star Chris Matthews believes 'the country is moving toward' Donald Trump as he suffers some negative polling. The former Hardball host had toed the liberal line as recently as April, when he drew a mocking tweet from a White House spokesperson for criticizing Trump's tariff plans. However, in a weekend interview with disgraced former PBS anchor Charlie Rose, Matthews believes the American people are more aligned with the president than ever. 'To be honest with you, the country is moving towards Trump,' he said, dismissing polls showing he's losing popularity. 'These polls, they come out and show him not doing well — I don't buy that. His strength is still greater than the Democratic strength. He is a stronger public figure than the Democratic people,' Matthews added. Matthews showed what he meant by having to go all the way back to former President Barack Obama to name a Democrat as popular as Trump is. 'Obama still has tremendous charisma — but Trump has strength. And I think that's what all voters look for,' he said. 'They want a president who is a strong figure. And he's got it. It's just there. And half the country buys it.' He also praised what Trump has done on immigration, as well as his foreign policy with regard to the drone strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. Matthews did dampen ideas of Trump running for a third term but noted that the president was easily more popular and influential than Elon Musk, dismissing any idea of Musk's America Party succeeding. '[Musk] plays the same role as Ross Perot,' he said, referencing the infamous third party candidate who hurt Republicans in the 1992 and 1996 elections and consider those who vote for his party unserious. While some polls have shown Trump on a downward slope, the president improved a hair with voters according to a new exclusive Daily Mail/J.L. Partners poll, even as they give him failing grades for his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Forty-nine percent of voters now approve of Trump's job performance as president, up one point from the tracking survey conducted earlier in July. But he remains underwater as 51 percent disapprove of Trump's job performance, down one point from earlier in the month. The margin of error in the survey of 1,007 registered voters is 3.1 percent. The poll numbers suggest Trump is surviving politically during a punishing news cycle consumed by the Epstein files and his administration's failure to disclose them as he promised during his presidential campaign. The president's job approval is up one percentage point from June and remains his highest rating since May. 'The news saga might have seemed terrible for Trump in the last few days, but it isn't having an impact on his approval rating,' James Johnson, JL Partners co-founder told the Daily Mail. 'In fact, we think it's going up, from 48 percent to 49 percent, making this his best approval rating since May. His ratings with the base is holding up too, unchanged on 91 percent with Republicans,' Johnson continued. But Trump's strong job approval ratings does not carry over to his handling of the Epstein files. Forty-two percent of voters disapprove of his handling of the issue while just 27 percent approve. A significant number of voters, 20 percent, did not appear to care about the case as they neither approved nor disapproved Trump's handling of the issue. In the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump referred to the ongoing saga as a 'witch hunt' indicating he was tired of answering questions from the media about it. Despite the president's best efforts to put the issue behind him, few voters believe in the administration's assessment of the case. Only fifteen percent in the poll said they believed the Justice Department's memo released by Attorney General Pam Bondi concluding that Epstein committed suicide in prison and that the infamous pedofile did not have a 'client list' they could release. Forty-seven percent said they did not believe the administration's account of the Epstein case, and that they believed there was more secrets to uncover. Twenty-three percent said they believed the Trump administration memo, but that there was more to uncover in the case. 'This is despite voters disapproving of his handling of the Epstein scandal. What explains the difference? Voters simply do not rate it highly on their list of priorities,' Johnson said. Ninety percent of the Republican voter base continue to grant the president solid approval ratings, despite their misgivings about the Epstein files. The poll was conducted as Trump furiously contested a Wall Street Journal report that he had signed a letter to Epstein for his 50th birthday which concluded: 'Happy Birthday - and may every day be another wonderful secret,' and featured a hand-drawn image of a naked woman as well as his signature. Trump decried the news article as 'fake' and filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the company. 'They are judging Trump on other issues - such as the economy, the southern border, and how he is actually running the country. Their grumbles on the Epstein handling are not enough for them to turn on their man,' Johnson said. While the majority of Republicans, 52 percent, give Trump a passing grade on his handling of the Epstein files, just 13 percent of Independent voters feel the same way. Fifty percent of independent voters in the survey said they disapproved of the way the Trump administration has handled the Epstein files case.
Fox News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Ex-MSNBC host praises Trump's political instincts, ability to connect to country culturally
Ex-MSNBC host Chris Matthews praised President Donald Trump during a conversation with Charlie Rose on Saturday, suggesting the president had a strong cultural connection to the country. "He's very good at knowing your condition, your worries, your insecurities. I mean, he'd be a great bully in a grade school, a Catholic high school or grade school. I mean, he'd be the scariest bully because he'd know everybody's weakness. But he's really good at the moment. I mean, he's out there watching television and keeping up, and, 'Is this the right thing to do, what we're doing right now?'" Mattews told Rose. "Biden couldn't do that in a million years, not a million years. Mondale couldn't do that. They don't have the connection to the electricity of what's going on in the country culturally. And he knows what works." Matthews, the former host of "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on MSNBC, spoke to Rose during his show, "A Charlie Rose Global Conversation." Rose began the discussion by asking Matthews how he would rate the president as a politician. "We have never had a president so instantly spontaneous that he knows this minute, if he had said at four o'clock this afternoon, he would say, 'You know, that's not really true anymore.' He will know the mood of the country. I once had a talk with him about the 'Zoolander' movie, Ben Stiller movie, and he said, 'Zoolander 1,' good timing. 'Zoolander 2,' didn't work. He's instantaneous," Matthews said. The former MSNBC host said Trump knew how to put down Jeb Bush and several of his GOP opponents. Matthews also argued that Trump was a strong public figure. "His strength is still greater than the Democratic strength," he told Rose. "He is a stronger public figure than the Democratic people. I mean, Obama still has tremendous charisma, but Trump has strength. And I think that's what all voters look for. They want a president who is a strong figure. And he's got it. It's just there. And half the country buys it." He also said that he didn't believe polls that showed Trump's popularity slipping. "To be honest with you, the country is moving towards Trump!" Matthews told Rose. "These polls, they come out and show him not doing well, I don't buy that." Matthews offered some political praise for Trump earlier this year over his efforts against elite institutions. "I have to say that the administration sometimes sets its targets in the right direction. The elite universities in this country are not exactly covered in roses right now in the way that they handled these demonstrations," Matthews said during MSNBC's "Morning Joe" in April. Matthews lamented that protests over the Israel-Hamas war over the last year prevented students from going to class, and said every student - Jewish or not - had a right to attend the classes they're paying for at universities like Harvard. "And the fact that they had to be told to do this, they had to be told to let students go to school, which is what this is about, that they had to be told to do, that they had a problem in their own heads. So I think the elite universities are taking a beating right now. It's probably a smart move," he said at the time.
Fox News
3 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Ex-MSNBC host Chris Matthews lauds Trump's political skill
Former MSNBC host Chris Matthews praised President Donald Trump's skills as a politician on Saturday during a conversation with Charlie Rose.
Fox News
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Chris Matthews says it's fair to call Obama's Iran nuclear deal a 'joke'
Former MSNBC host Chris Matthews offered surprising criticism of former President Obama on Friday after Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched a sweeping strike on Iran's nuclear sites Thursday evening. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that one of Iran's top nuclear facilities had been hit in the operation intended to target Iran's nuclear and missile infrastructure. Two Iranian generals and at least 20 senior Iranian commanders were also killed in the strikes. According to an IDF spokesman, the strike came after Jerusalem had collected "high-quality intel" that suggested "Iran is closer than ever to developing a nuke." During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Friday, Matthews defended Israel's attack, saying the country "can't afford to have an aggressive war by nuclear weapons with Iran." "They have to stop them from having nuclear weapons," he said, before criticizing Obama's 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that President Donald Trump withdrew from in his first term. "Now, Obama said, 'I'll put a time limit on it. 'They can't have one for five years.' Well, fairly enough, Trump said, 'That's a joke. Five years, they'll have one.' So that's not going to stop them," Matthews said. The criticism of the former president is notable since Matthews is widely remembered for saying he "felt a thrill" up his leg listening to then-candidate Obama speak during the 2008 election. Obama's office did not immediately return Fox News Digital's request for comment. Matthews continued on Friday by discussing how Trump should deal with Iran: "So he can't make a deal that says X many years. He can't come out and say, 'Okay, we're going to stop them from getting a weapon for five years.' He'll be laughed at because that's what the Obama deal was. So he has to really get rid of the bomb-making ability of that country." In 2018, Trump terminated the U.S. participation in the nuclear deal with Iran, calling it "one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into." Matthews said that Iran "wants to bomb Israel," so destroying their ability to make nuclear weapons is the only option. "He's got to stop them from their nuclear route. He's got to get them off that route to something else," the former "Hardball" host said of Trump. "But I think it's an aggressive war by Iran, and that's why people are rooting for Israel in this situation with Iran," Matthews added. On Thursday, Trump told Fox News that he was aware beforehand that Israel was going to launch strikes as he urged Iran to make a deal. "Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb, and we are hoping to get back to the negotiating table. We will see. There are several people in leadership in Iran that will not be coming back," Trump said.
