MSNBC host apologizes to Sanders for Nazi era comparison

“Sen. Sanders, I’m sorry for comparing anything from that tragic era in which so many suffered, especially the Jewish people,” Matthews said.

By Aaron Sull, World Israel News

MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews apologized to Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Monday for recently comparing his Nevada caucuses win to a Nazi invasion.

Matthews opened up his daily TV show by saying “As I watched the one-sided results of Saturday’s Democratic caucus in Nevada, I reached for an historical analogy and used a bad one. I was wrong to refer to an event from . . . the first days of World War II.”

“Sen. Sanders, I’m sorry for comparing anything from that tragic era in which so many suffered, especially the Jewish people, to an electoral result in which you were the well-deserved winner. This is going to be a hard-fought heated campaign of ideas,” said Matthews.

“Congratulations to you, Sen. Sanders, and to your supporters on a tremendous win down in Nevada,” he added.

In response to the apology, Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said in a statement that they “appreciate some of the steps MSNBC has taken, and we hope to get fairer coverage going forward.”

Over the weekend, the MSNBC host received massive backlash on Twitter after he compared Sanders’s win in Nevada to the Nazi invasion of France.

“I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940, and the general, Renault, calls up Churchill and says, ‘It’s over.’ And Churchill says ‘How can it be? You’ve got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?’ He said, ‘It’s over,’” Matthews said during MSNBC’s broadcast of Saturday’s Nevada caucuses.

Sanders, a Jewish candidate with extended family that was murdered in the Holocaust, has spoken before about the impact his Jewish lineage has on his candidacy.

“It impacts me very profoundly,” Sanders said at a town hall event in New Hampshire earlier this month.

“When I try to think about the views that I came to hold there are two factors,” he said. “One I grew up in a family that didn’t have a lot of money…and the second one is being Jewish.”

At the New Hampshire town hall, Sanders also recalled how during his youth he cried when he looked at picture books of World War II and when he learned that six million Jews perished in the Holocaust.

Benrie SandersChris Matthews