"It's a trap."

💡The moment when MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Mika Brzezinski finally realize Democrats have been duped by Trump into defending violent crime in DC:

“It’s a trap!" pic.twitter.com/J3AlvIKGHA

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) August 13, 2025

"In politics, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were, and maybe still are, daddies. A daddy-in-training is New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani..."

"... who Gates says 'hasn’t aged into daddyhood' quite yet. What all daddies have in common is the notion of or desire for a power imbalance — a dynamic at play in real and metaphoric, honorific paternal relationships.... Milo Yiannopoulos... began calling Trump daddy in 2017. At an October 2024 rally, speaking before Trump took the stage, Tucker Carlson compared Americans to naughty little girls who have misbehaved. 'When Dad gets home, you know what he says? You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now,' Carlson told the crowd, in perhaps one of the creepiest moments of the campaign. 'And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you.' 'Daddy’s Home' shirts featuring Trump and the White House began circulating on Etsy shortly after his November win... We seem to have entered a deeply submissive era. Everyone is being well-behaved for Daddy, lest they be spanked.... But power and wealth are not all that a true daddy possesses....."

Writes Maura Judkis, in "Who’s your daddy? These days, who isn’t? Mack daddy, leather daddy, sugar daddy, Daddy Trump: The fraught and Freudian journey of a domineering archetype" (WaPo).

Gates = Bransen Gates, an Instagrammer who lipsynchs to Trump audio and demonstrates, comically, that Trump was born to be a gay man.

Perhaps you, like me, remember the phrase "Daddy's Home" as the title of a lovely doowop song from 1961 by Shep & the Limelites, so: here.

Even better:

"MSNBC used to run this thing: this is who we are. Well, I didn’t like who you were this week, and I don’t think a lot of people who work there liked this either..."

".... and I think this ‘cancel culture’ is a cancer on progressivism... Liberals always have to fight a two-front war. Republicans only have to fight the Democrats; Democrats have to fight the Republicans, and each other."

Said Bill Maher, quoted in "Bill Maher Goes Full Sexist, Defends Chris Matthews and Mocks His Sexual Harassment Accuser/It was a truly ugly, outrageously sexist display from the 'Real Time' host" (The Daily Beast).

According to Maher, Matthews “said some things that are kind of creepy to women,” continuing, “You know, I just, guys are married for a million years, they want to flirt for two seconds. He said to somebody, Laura Bassett, four years ago, she’s in makeup, he said, ‘Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?’ Yes, it is creepy. She said, ‘I was afraid to name him at the time out of fear of retaliation. I’m not afraid anymore.’ Thank you, Rosa Parks. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ! I guess my question is: Do you wonder how Democrats lose?"...

Chris Matthews has abruptly resigned from his long-running "Hardball" show.

The NYT reports.

Mr. Matthews, 74, has faced mounting criticism in recent days over a spate of embarrassing on-air moments, including a comparison of Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign to the Nazi invasion of France and an interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren in which the anchor was criticized for a condescending and disbelieving tone.

On Saturday, the journalist Laura Bassett published an article on the website of GQ magazine describing a series of episodes where, she wrote, Mr. Matthews made inappropriate comments about her appearance in the makeup room of his studio before she was a guest on his program.

ADDED: From NBC:

After MSNBC aired a commercial following the announcement, Matthews did not return to the program. Steve Kornacki, a political reporter for the network, took over the rest of the hour, and seemed shocked by the news. “That was a lot to take in,” he said, saying it had been an honor to work with Matthews, and then beginning a discussion about the coronavirus response.

"Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is... because... the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the back!... That's a Hoosierism. You've got to get used to that!"

Are you getting used to Hoosierisms?

But that's not the Hoosier Pete Buttigieg. The elision after "because" was "in 1988." The quote is from Dan Quayle speaking to the California delegates at the Republican National Convention in 1988.

That just happens to be the top quote on the Dan Quayle page at Wikiquote where I went looking for another quote.

I also found this really Trumpesque line: "This is what I say about the scorn of the media elite: I wear their scorn as a badge of honor."

And here's one where it really seems that he's talking about Trump: "People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history."

Quayle really was a man who looked into the future: "In George Bush you get experience, and with me you get the future"/"The future will be better tomorrow"/"I believe that I've made good judgments in the past, and I think I've made good judgments in the future." So why not credit him with predicting the Trump presidency?

The quote I was actually looking for was his awkward riff on "A mind is a terrible thing to waste":

What a waste it is to lose one's mind, or not to have a mind is being very wasteful, how true that is.

I was thinking of that and how true it is, when I saw the headline "The Great Liberal Freakout Has Begun/Biden is fading fast, and Democrats are losing their minds." That's by Robert Stacy McCain in American Spectator. Excerpt:

In a panel discussion following Friday night’s debate in New Hampshire, [Chris] Matthews went on a rant against socialism, recalling his Cold War–era visits to Vietnam and Cuba: “Being there, I’ve seen what socialism is like. I don’t like it, OK? It’s not only not free, it doesn’t freaking work. It just doesn’t work.” As his fellow MSNBC panelists looked aghast, Matthews continued, saying that if “the Reds had won the Cold War, there would have been executions in Central Park, and I might have been one of the ones getting executed, and certain other people would be there cheering, OK?”

"Can I have some of the queen’s waters? Precious waters?——Where’s that Bill Cosby pill I brought with me?"

That's January 5, 2016, and Chris Matthews is about to interview Hillary Clinton and yukking it up about "Bill Cosby pills."

Hardball.

Drudge links to The Daily Caller. What is Chris Matthews accused of doing that got NBC to pay $40,000 to settle?

The woman complained to CNBC executives about Matthews making inappropriate comments and jokes about her while in the company of others... Based on people who were involved in matter, the network concluded that the comments were inappropriate and juvenile but were not intended to be taken as propositions.

What were the comments? Blandly referred to like that, they seem like something almost anyone might have done. Should we all be cowering in fear?

Gloria Steinem hopes Donald Trump will lose "in a very definitive and humiliating way."

She wants humiliation. What is that about?

It made me think about something else I read this morning: "MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Caught on Hot Mic Ogling Melania Trump." That's in Variety, which is going after Matthews for saying, "Did you see her walk? Runway walk. My God is that good." I have trouble even seeing what's wrong with that. Modeling was her chosen profession and she has real skills that people admire. Variety puts Matthews's remark into what's supposed to look like a pattern: "The pundit has been accused of sounding sexist on live television many times before. Here’s a look at some of his sexually regressive greatest hits." That sounds awful, but I don't see the pattern. Just because you make a list doesn't mean you have a list of things that belong together. But what I wanted to pull out of that list — because I'm trying to understand why Steinem wants to see humiliation — was something about humiliation:

(3) January 9, 2008: Argues Hillary Clinton Is Successful Because Bill Clinton “Messed Around”

Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Matthews credited said she appealed to voters as a suffering wife, “I think the Hillary appeal has always been somewhat about her mix of toughness and sympathy for her. Let’s not forget the reason she is a U.S. Senator, the reason she is a candidate for President is because her husband messed around. We keep forgetting it. She didn’t get there on her merits, because everyone felt, ‘My God, this woman stood up under humiliation.’ Right? That’s what happened.” Matthews later apologized and admitted he “sounded nasty.”

What is it about humiliation? We have a creepy love of it — a fascination — do we not? I confess to using the word myself on the night of the Indiana primary: "CNN talk is all about Trump but the big news is Hillary's humiliation."

It should be enough that the better candidate wins and the loser concedes with dignity. Why do we want to stare into the pain of the one who is defeated? What's wrong with us? Those questions relate to what I said on Tuesday and what Gloria Steinem said about the coming election, but it's a weirder dynamic that Chris Matthews talked about, the embrace of the humiliated woman, the desire to see her win because of her humiliation. It makes me wonder whether we really accept the truly independent, strong, successful woman. Maybe we need our woman pre-crushed.

But I'm looking back to the last time Hillary Clinton was elected, which was 9 years ago. Maybe we've changed, and that humiliation happened 18 years ago. Whatever taste for humiliated women America may retain at this point, is Hillary still crushed enough?

IN THE COMMENTS:  Henry said:

Althouse wrote: Modeling was her chosen profession and she has real skills that people admire.

This reminded me of a weird line in the Melania profile [in The New Yorker that] you linked the other day:

Through a quirk in immigration law, models, nearly half of them without high-school diplomas, are admitted on H-1B visas, as highly skilled workers, along with scientists and computer programmers, who are required to show proof of a college degree.

What a lovely mashup of intellectual snobbery and fake distinction this is! Think of all the athletes, artists, actors, and musicians who work in the U.S. despite not being "highly skilled" workers like "scientists and compute programmers." Of course, through a quirk of immigration law they have O and P visas.

Hot of the trail of gender politics.

On "Meet the Press" today, Chuck Todd was talking to Molly Ball (The Atlantic) and Jose Diaz-Balart (Telemundo and NBC News)on the subject of whether some of the criticism Hillary Clinton is based on her gender.

Molly Ball said that the political science research shows that women don't get more comments about their looks than men do and that controlled experiments show people are more likely to trust the woman (mainly because women seem like outsiders). The unstated implication is that Hillary Clinton is a specific woman and the dislike for her isn't about women generally but her specifically.

But there's a difference between what's really true and what is useful. If women — notably older women — believe discrimination against women is a problem, that belief might be leveraged. Chuck Todd asked Jose Diaz-Balart if Hillary would be able to "galvanize women." (Putting the "gal" in "galvanize.")

Diaz-Balart just said: "When was the last time that we heard a criticism of a man screaming too much?" And Chuck Todd said "Howard Dean" (referring to this). I couldn't believe it! How did they suddenly forget the man they otherwise can't stop talking about — Donald Trump? Donald Trump's manner of speaking is continually criticized. He's yelling. It sounds mean. It incites violence! It's coming out of a mouth that looks like Mussolini's mouth!

Diaz-Balart said: "I don't understand why Hillary Clinton has to be said she's screaming, she has to smile more. I don't hear men being asked that in the same way." But the speech styles of male candidates are often the subject of criticism. For example, just a few days ago, Chris Matthews said:

"I find Cruz very hard to listen to. He’s relentless, and he whines... He’s got this same angry edge to his voice all the time... There’s no, there’s no lift in it. There’s no hope in it. It’s just this grinding negativity toward anyone he’s competing with."

Molly Ball said that Hillary Clinton is trying "very hard to turn herself into a sort of feminist-identity politics candidate... has really leaned into the woman thing this year, and it hasn't worked." But there's this idea that if/when she gets to a one-on-one fight with Trump, the gender politics will get "really intense."

Chuck Todd brought up that anti-Trump ad we were talking about yesterday — the one with various women reading out-of-context quotes from Donald Trump (e.g., "That must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees"). Todd enthuses: "Can you imagine if they put money behind that ad and ran it for two weeks?"

There's no recognition of any incoherence and hypocrisy. I'm seeing — in Todd and the others on his show — a willingness to use overt gender politics against Republicans whenever it seems it will work, but Republicans are criticized for using gender politics even whenever it's just an argument that some criticism of Hillary could have something to do with her femaleness.

ADDED: Let me put that "dropping to your knees" quote in its proper context, which isn't a general statement about women, but a specific situation in which someone else had used the expression and he was cracking a mildly smutty joke:

"Man, you guys cannot stop talking about him. He is a dangerous presence and, you know, it’s just like candy by the bushel."

Said Hillary into a hot mike. She was talking to Chris Matthew, chatting between segments of an MSNBC town hall.

“We dip into him, dip out of him,” said Matthews. “We have a progressive audience, obviously. But, uh, nobody can tell what people want to watch.”

“Yeah,” she said, adding that people do “want to watch him.”

“— to laugh at him,” Matthews replied.

Then they talked about  Chris Christie: “Why did he support [Trump]?” Clinton wondered. And then Ben Carson, whom Matthews said he'd known "forever" and found "very soft spoken, never said a thing." Then Matthews said Carson reminded him of Tommy Smothers, and Clinton expressed appreciation to get to talk to someone who — unlike her young staffpeople — remembers the old TV shows. That caused Matthews to say "Sid Caesar" 3 times, and Clinton said "Ed Sullivan!"

"Iran is not your ally. Iran is not your friend. Iran is your enemy. It's not your partner. Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel."

Said Benjamin Netanyahu on "Face the Nation" this morning.

"This is not a friend, neither in the battle against ISIS nor in the great effort that should be made to deprive him of the capacity to make nuclear weapons. Don't fall for Iran's ruse, they are not your friend," Netanyahu said.

Over on "Meet the Press" this morning, Chris Matthews was going on about how Obama needed to meet with John Boehner and really pressure him, ask him — "in public... on television" — "What is your opposition to this immigration bill? Is it we don't have enough enforcement? I'll give you more enforcement. Is it hiring rules? We're going to enforce them. I promise you we're going to enforce them. What do you want? So you're absolutely against any kind of amnesty for people who have been here 20, 30 years, absolutely against it? So what then when the president issues the executive order, people will understand he really tried to negotiate. Let me tell you something, we're negotiating with Tehran right now. We're desperately trying to cut a deal over nuclear weapons to the last moment. Why don't we have negotiations going on right now between the two sides?"

Chuck Todd brings him up short:  "You know... I can hear Republicans now echoing, he'll negotiate with the Iranians, he won't negotiate with us on immigration."

Matthews (clearly upset): "That's not the way I said it."

Todd: "No, I'm telling you how you're going to get requoted.... that's how he's going to get requoted."

Matthews: "But they want to negotiate though, Chuck." They, that is, Iran.

Now, go back to the top and read what Netanyahu said.

Whose leg felt that thrill?

The NYT book review of Gabriel Sherman’s biography of Roger Ailes, "The Loudest Voice in the Room," is written by Janet Maslin, who trashes the book, but not because she likes Ailes. It's that Sherman failed to get the goods on Ailes.

I just want to focus on one sentence:

The second half of “The Loudest Voice in the Room” is mostly devoted to recent and familiar news, beginning with the moment Fox began getting thrills up its leg over Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky debacle. 

Come on. MSNBC owns the expression "thrill up my leg." Even though the Bill-and-Monica story had lots of sex and Fox News may have been eager to cover it, the eagerness didn't arise out of a vector of thrill going toward the groin. The journalistic enthusiasm described as a "thrill up my leg" came from Chris Matthews and he was titillated not by anybody's sexual activities but by the speechifying of Barack Obama.



That's on the list of nominees for most ridiculous, embarrassing thing ever said on a TV news show, and we're never going to forget it. Have at Fox News, perhaps by mocking some schoolboy furtively masturbatory outburst if you can, but if you talk of thrills up a leg, that leg is attached to MSNBC.

Etymological sidenote: The original meaning of "debacle" — used above in the phrase "getting thrills up its leg over Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky debacle" — was, according to the (unlinkable) OED "A breaking up of ice in a river; in Geol. a sudden deluge or violent rush of water, which breaks down opposing barriers, and carries before it blocks of stone and other debris." The figurative meaning is: "A sudden breaking up or downfall; a confused rush or rout, a stampede." Yes, it's a dead metaphor, but it goes nicely with blowjobs, don't you think? Not that Bill ever was icy.

Floaters... a post inspired by the Chris Matthews statement that Obama's "got floaters, like Valerie Jarrett, floating around."

See the the previous post for the context and analysis of the quote. This is a more light-hearted exploration of "floaters."

1. "Float On," by The Floaters... a hit song from 1977. Lyrics here. Each Floater — Ralph, Charles, Paul, Larry — has his own verse in which he begins by announcing his astrological sign and proceeds to tell use what kind of women he likes. Ralph, the Aquarius, likes "a woman who loves her freedom," etc.

2. "Float On," by Modest Mouse, is a completely different song. It's about not worrying about your problems: "Even if things get heavy, we'll all float on/Alright already, we'll all float on alright."

3. The top definition for "floater" at Urban Dictionary is: "a social mastermind who wavers between members of one particular clique or between multiple cliques in general, pitting people against one another and leeching out information without seeming like a threat." Definitions #2, #3, and #5 refer to buoyant fecal matter. Definition #4 refers to those bits in your eyes, and #6 is "A dead body found in the water."

4. In Adelaide, they eat a comfort food called a "pie floater." "Anthony Bourdain, Joe Cocker, Billy Connolly, Nigel Mansell, Shane Warne and Angus Young are high profile fans of the pie floater."

5. Bob Dylan has a song called "Floater (Too Much To Ask)." The word "floater" does not appear in the song, though Bob appears in a boat in verse #3 fishing for bullheads, and in verse #12, there's a reference to "rebel rivers," which include the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee.

Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, and Chris Matthews daintily allude to Obama's masculinity deficit.

On yesterday's "Meet the Press," Tom Brokaw said it was "just inexplicable" that the Obamacare website "suddenly landed the way that it did, in utter chaos." The President should have pressured "Kathy Sebelius and other people" about the "rollout" which was "going to be our big play for the second term."

"Big play" picks up on that football metaphor Obama used 4 times in his November 14th remarks. "We fumbled," he said, though in real football, it's an individual player who fumbles. But here was this "big play," and somebody fumbled. Was it "Kathy"?

The moderator David Gregory, immediately steps up to frame the next question in macho terms: "Who's got the muscle?" The manly (though 50-years-dead) JFK somehow shoulders his way into the conversation. Gregory turns to Chris Matthews and says:

You were making the point to me this week about, you know, where's his Bobby Kennedy? Who's got the muscle? When the president says, and he did say, "The user experience of this website is everything," who had the muscle in the White House to get it done and make sure the president gets what he wants?

Muscle, muscle, muscle. If a right-winger had phrased the question that way, somebody would call this misogyny. These 3 men — Brokaw, Gregory, and Matthews — are hankering for a muscular man who can nail the big play. He depended on a Kathy when he needed a Bobby. And here's what Chrissy Matthews said:

Everybody goes to their battle stations when there's chaos. 

I'll see you your football metaphor, and raise you a military metaphor.

You always go to where you've been arguing before. But I've always been arguing this president doesn't have a chain of command, a very clear line of authority and unique responsibility. I remember Sebelius, who I like of course, most people do like her, she's a public servant. 

She's liked. Kathy's likeable enough. She's a good servant.

But when she was asked, "Who's in charge?" in that committee, under oath, she started to talk about someone, the head of C.M.S., who handles Medicare and Medicaid. Among 30 or 40 other responsibilities, this person had the rollout responsibilities.

And was "this person" male or female? Female. Marilyn Tavenner. Can you say her name without vaulting back in time to your old macho icons Jack and Bobby? They knew what "responsibilities" to give their Marilyn.

Matthews reaches even further back, to an even manlier man:

Look at Japan, the occupation of Japan, it simple: Put one guy in charge, Doug MacArthur. 

Put one guy in charge. Doug. Call him Doug, not Douglas. Not — in the style of "Kathy" — Dougy. He's Doug. And there was a guy! Put one guy in charge.

You put somebody in charge and they're uniquely responsible for its success or failure. Obama doesn't do things that way. He's got floaters, like Valerie Jarett, floating around. 

Floaters. Like Valerie Jarrett. The disrespect! They can't even spell her name right in the transcript. Floaters, like Valerie Jarrett, floating around. Matthews being a good Democrat somehow feels secure that the double meaning of "floaters" won't bring on the accusations of racism that would surely have burst forth if a Republican had talked about Jarrett like that.

He doesn't want to have a real chief of staff, like a Jim Baker.

He's saying — it's hardly subtle — that Jarrett's not a real man. You need a man. A man like Bobby or Doug or Jim.

He doesn't want to give authority to people, and I think it's been a real problem.

So what does this say about Obama, not wanting to bring in real men, who take charge, who make the play, who exert authority? He's not man enough to work alongside real men? He needs to play with the ladies, ladies who don't know their place — who dither and float?

"The great thing about Bill Clinton is his hands are completely in touch with the average American."

Said Chris Matthews, on "Meet the Press" this morning, unintentionally conjuring up an image that made us laugh.

He continued:

He's got his hands on the American experience in a way that Obama's probably lost for a while, that connection. He knows people are really bugged by this promise that wasn't kept. He knows it.

Scott Walker entertains the notion of entirely extracting government from the business of recognizing marriage.

On "Meet the Press" today, David Gregory asked Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: "Are younger conservatives more apt to see marriage equality as something that is, you know, what they believe, that is basic, rather than as a disqualifying issue?" Walker said:

Well, I think there's no doubt about that. But I think that's all the more reason, when I talk about things, I talk about the economic and fiscal crisis in our state and in our country. That's what people want to resonate about. They don't want to get focused on those issues....

Later, pushed to talk about a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, Walker said:

Well, the interesting thing on the generational standpoint is I've had young people ask me-- I think an appropriate question is not expanding it to include folks who are not one man and one woman, but rather questioning why the government's sanctioning it in the first place? And that would be the alternative, say not have the government sanction... marriage period. And leave that up to the churches and the synagogues and others to define that....

This is an issue that's been raised time and again in the comments to same-sex marriage posts on this blog. Virtually any time I write about same-sex marriage, this suggestion comes up.

Chris Matthews jumped all over Walker's idea: "Well, you can't get away because here are issues of Social Security payments and all kinds of things involved in that. And rights of prisoners and rights of people in the military. You have to recognize spousal rights."

Marriage is very deeply embedded in so much of what government does. How could you disentangle it now? It's interesting to think of what might have been if government had stayed out of marriage all along, but that's not the question. I think the only way forward is to recognize same-sex marriage, and, in fact, I hope the Supreme Court blesses us with the requisite constitutional right, so the political discourse can move on to other subjects — including the usual railing about activist judges.

"He’s the president of the United States. You don’t say, 'You’ll get your chance.'"

"I don’t think [Romney] understands the Constitution of the United States," fretted Chris Matthews, analyzing the second debate performance with James Lipton, the "Inside the Actor’s Studio" guy.

Why not have an acting expert analyze the performances? It is theater, isn't it? And, if it's theater, how does Obama play the role of the President, and how does Romney play the role of The Man Who Would Be President, speaking to the man who is President? How to embody presidentialness, when presidentiality currently resides in that other man, who's treading the boards with you?

I don't know why Matthews dragged in some half-assed law stuff when he had the acting expert there. Bring on a law professor if you want to do that.

"How are your passions...?"/"I am bloody elated."

Chris Matthews/Andrew Sullivan.

Josh Marshall says Cory Booker did not make a gaffe.

Is Booker in this for himself? Are media folk like David Gregory actually conservative when it comes to financial matters?

ADDED: Chris Matthews accuses Booker of "sabotage" and "betrayal."

AND: Ana Marie Cox endorses Obama's "vampire" metaphor:

[I]t's pretty accurate: private equity firms exist to squeeze liquidity out of companies, then syphon off that profit to investors. The metaphor works on a deeper level as well. Just as with vampires, Americans are morbidly fascinated by hyperbolic success. We have an uneasy relationship with late, post-bailout capitalism: it's sexy, it's parasitical, it's dangerous, it's the product of unseen forces, it carries the promise of immortality at the cost of one's soul.

 Let's remember Booker's word: nauseating.  That appeal to emotion and unreason — seen vividly in Cox — is nauseating.

Chris Matthews on Barack Obama: "He doesn't like the company of fellow politicians."

This was on "Meet the Press" this morning. David Gregory was asking Matthews about his statement that "Obama is a `transactional' politician; he cuts deals with people, but he doesn't forge bonds. When is he going to bolster this political forces? I keep waiting." Matthews comments:

I know. And he doesn't like the company of fellow politicians. You have to like their company. This forging of bonds is essential in politics. It's what I always thought politics was....

Jack Kennedy started to accumulate troops in high school, when he was in the Navy. He saved the lives of 10 crewmen. They, they looked up to him. He went out and risked his life in the, in the middle of the South Pacific to save their lives. He looked out for his troops. That... word like that gets around. "Hey, this guy looks out for his troops."

The Kennedy party, which my old boss, Tip O'Neill, recognized was a unique party of people that looked out for one guy: Jack Kennedy. And he was their hero. They wore the tie clasp from the PT 109 days. They fought for him, they died for him, they killed his enemies for him. Bobby Kennedy was the number one enforcer. Who is Barack Obama's Bobby Kennedy?...

[JFK]  had to create a political party which was loyal to one person, him. And he built it from the ground up. Obama cuts deals. He raises money, he makes people ambassador, he does all the normal things. But there's no, there's no sealing there.

The reference to making people ambassador is a reference to Jon Huntsman (who was on the show earlier). Matthews imagines Obama's thoughts on the subject: "I made you ambassador to the most important country in the world, and you come back and run against me in the same term?"

In the same vein, Matthews compared Obama to the Clintons:

There are more Clinton people out there today than there are Obama people. Today they're ready to move. If Hillary calls up and says, "I'm going," I mean they're there. She won't do it, but of course. But, I mean, it's--but they're ready....