Appearing on MSNBC, Monday, to promote his new special on Barack Obama, Chris Matthews attacked “older white people” for still holding bigoted feelings against the first African American President.
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A transcript of the exchange, which occurred at 11:44am EST, follows:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, it’s two years and tonight we’re honoring that as well as the Martin Luther King Day and it’s sort of an interesting overlay, the two of them. The first African-American president, no matter what we say, it’s non-ethnic, non-racial about the President, I think that’s appropriate 90 percent of the time, it is historically important and it will be marked I think by a lot of people in history books that he is the first African-American president and how well he did.
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JANSING: Let me play a clip from tonight’s program. Then we’ll talk a little more.
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UNIDENTIFIED: After the election, I think because some of the hard slogging and the politics, he [Obama] didn’t become that inspirational personality. Ronald Reagan in his first two years, he had more unemployment, he didn’t have a financial crisis, but Reagan was able to keep up that inspiration.
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MATTHEWS: Did you see the age difference there?
JANSING: What would you say it is?
MATTHEWS: It means–it’s significant. I think older Americans, older white people still have a problem with this guy.
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MATTHEWS: And I think that’s a generalization and I’ll stick with it. I think younger people do not see race as an obstacle. I don’t think–I think, they’re much more non-judgmental. In fact, about ethnicity, they just say that’s not relevant–In fact, they say it’s irrelevant and don’t even notice it, whereas older people notice it all the time.
Source: YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS-ttgrzuAE
Length: 1:13
