MSNBC contributor Anand Giridharadas knocked longtime “Hardball” host Chris Matthews during a broadcast on the network Sunday after Matthews compared Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) victory in the Nevada caucuses Saturday night to the Nazi invasion of France.
“Why is Chris Matthews on this air talking about the victory Bernie Sanders, who had kin murdered in the Holocaust, analogizing it to the Nazi conquest of France?” Giridharadas said during an appearance on “AM Joy” early Sunday.
“People stuck in an old way of thinking, in 20th century thinking, are missing what is going on. It is time for all of us to step up, rethink the dawn of what may be, frankly, a new era in American life,” he continued.
His comments came in response to remarks Matthew made about Sanders, who is Jewish and has relatives who died in the Holocaust, during the network’s live coverage of the Nevada caucuses on Saturday.
“I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940,” Matthews said then. “And the general, Reynaud, calls up Churchill and says, ‘It’s over.’ And Churchill says, ‘How can that be? You’ve got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?’ He said, ‘It’s over.'”
His remarks were met with immediate backlash on social media and calls for his resignation.
In a pair of follow-up tweets on Sunday morning after his appearance on the network, Giridharadas said that he “needed to speak truth” about Matthews.
“You simply cannot compare the victory of Bernie Sanders, whose kin was murdered in the Holocaust, to the Nazi defeat of France,” he wrote. “This is a moment in media to grow and become curious or irrelevant.”
In recent months, MSNBC has received pushback from some supporters of Sanders, as well as his campaign, over its coverage of him.
Earlier this month, an undecided voter told the network’s Ari Melber during a live interview that she backed the senator in the New Hampshire primary “because of MSNBC.”
“I think it is completely cynical to say that [Sanders] lost 50 percent of his vote from [2016] when there were two candidates. Now there are multiple, wonderful candidates who are great candidates who would be great presidents we can all get behind,” the woman said then.
“The kind of ‘stop Bernie cynicism’ that I heard from a number of people — I watch MSNBC constantly — that I heard from a number of commentators … made me angry, and I said, ‘OK, Bernie’s got my vote,'” she added.