Hardball with Chris Matthews
MSNBC
June 18, 2008
MATTHEWS: You know, of course, that was Luke Russert, Tim`s -- wonderful son who gave that tribute. It was quite a tribute by a son to a father.
And here we have an amazing, kind of mystical thing that just happened. As we came out of the memorial service, we came out at Kennedy Center right behind me -- the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts -- we saw a double rainbow.
Take a look at this. This is natural. It -- look at it -- it`s a double. You can see the one at the tree level and then one higher up, sort of -- from our perspective, about five feet up.
But look at it. A double rainbow. It`s kind of -- you know, the mystics will make something of this.
Let`s go to the people who are not mystics. Peter King, U.S. congressman from New York and MSNBC political analyst and great "Washington Post" reporter, Eugene Robinson.
I want to start with you, sir.
REP. PETER KING (R), NEW YORK: Yes.
MATTHEWS: And you know, I make these questions up on nights like this -- rather on the moment.
KING: Right. I believe it.
MATTHEWS: I -- and your sarcasm comes free of apprise here.
KING: Yes.
MATTHEWS: It seems to me that Tim, who I`ve worked with all these years, has been a colleague all these years, and yet the reaction of the public seems to have something beyond something to do with journalism or what job he did, his craft of asking tough questions.
What was it? Why the emotional -- I mean look at the people here tonight. What a cross-section.
KING: Yes. I would say somehow he managed to identify with the middle class people, the neighborhood people. He wasn`t like a movie star. I mean I spent this weekend, I go into the Dunkin` Donuts, I go to a diner, people talking about Tim Russert.
But it wasn`t like when some superstar, a movie star, (INAUDIBLE) died. It was like a neighbor died or a friend or a cousin or -- and somehow he transcended what you and I do.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
KING: . and he was able to project that into working neighborhoods.
MATTHEWS: Eugene?
EUGENE ROBINSON, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: I think that`s true. I`ve actually been trying to figure it out.
Over the weekend, just doing errands around my house. People who had -- you know at the store, at the grocery store, at the laundry, people who had seen me on "Meet the Press" with Tim, people I didn`t know kept coming up to me and expressing their condolences as if I had lost a member of my family.
It was a reaction I hadn`t anticipated, I hadn`t really seen before, and I`m still trying to really understand. Clearly, he meant.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
ROBINSON: . something to the country beyond being, you know, the guy who asked David Duke the tough questions that Sunday.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
ROBINSON: . or the guy who -- you know who said that we will be greeted as liberators from Cheney. I mean it`s -- it was more than that.
MATTHEWS: I wonder if it`s -- let me try something that`s almost operatic. His love affair with the Buffalo Bills. It`s sort of like the stuff of opera because the Buffalo Bills don`t always win. I don`t think it would have worked if he was a Yankee fan or even a Sox fan, right?
KING: Or, you know, Brooklyn Dodger fan?
MATTHEWS: More like a Dodger fan.
KING: That`s right. Yes. Right, yes.
MATTHEWS: Something about loyalty to church, to his family, to his country. I wonder whether -- and I`m not being soporific here. I wonder at a time we have a lot of sophisticated journalists, with Ivy League degrees, and we have politicians with great erudition and sophistication, some of them.
We have people with real ideology, an agenda and are angry, some of them. That Tim wasn`t angry. He didn`t have an ideology that I could ever figure out. I know he worked with Democrats, but I could never discern it. He was probably tougher on a lot of Democrats than some Republicans.
But what is it? Because I think that -- I -- you say it`s not like movie star.
Three big surprises in our life. I bet movie stars die, we all have - - it`s like one day in the paper, move on.
ROBINSON: Right. It happens.
MATTHEWS: You know, Carry Grant, a couple days.
ROBINSON: Yes.
MATTHEWS: Princess Diana.
ROBINSON: Yes.
MATTHEWS: Out of nowhere. Way past his prime, Elvis Presley.
ROBINSON: Yes.
MATTHEWS: I think it`s what you said, the category. Women who`d been abused by men identify with this beautiful princess who had been abused by the royal family and by their husband and everybody else over there.
Categories.
Elvis Presley was a country boy. Country boys are always ignored. Hicks, we call them, the guys from the sticks. Elvis Presley was their guy.
Tim Russert, seems to me, he was the truck driver, the plumber, the garbage truck guy, the cop. The -- you know like where we came from, and not where he ended up. As they were kidding about it, not every regular guy from Buffalo has a kid from St. Albans Preparatory School and a home.
ROBINSON: You`re right. And a house in Nantucket, right.
MATTHEWS: It`s the house in Nantucket. But he still looked like the guy from there.
KING: He looked like the guy. He sounded like the guy.
MATTHEWS: From Buffalo.
KING: And everyone who really hard, put in a full days work. That`s the impression.
MATTHEWS: That`s it.
KING: You know that he wasn`t above it all, that he was -- you know that he rolled up his sleeves. I mean on "Meet the Press" that`s what he was. There was no prima donna there. I mean you -- it`s like going into the ring for 15-round fight.
MATTHEWS: OK. Let me take you into the Republican cloak room. I never was in that room, by the way. I was in the Democratic cloak room.
You`re in the -- Republican cloak room in the house and you`re all -- eating hot dogs. That`s what they eat in the Democratic side. What do they eat in the Republican side?
KING: Hotdogs.
MATTHEWS: OK. They`re eating hotdogs in there and they`re watching TV, and they`re watching -- what do they say when the name Russert come up over the years? Not now after he passed but what was Russert`s rep among pals?
KING: He`s respected. I mean nobody thought he had an agenda. I mean -- again they figure that he respected us, we respected him. I never saw any of the vitriol that you may find against other.
MATTHEWS: Against me.
KING: Some guys, so are you, but I mean -- or you know, liberals (INAUDIBLE) and conservatives.
MATTHEWS: Did you get a sense -- I know he worked for Moynihan, he worked for Cuomo. Did you guys get a sense that he was tougher on R`s than D`s?
KING: No, not at all. In fact, he looked upon him as the guy who worked for working class politicians, who their way up, who are also very, very smart. And that`s the way people saw Tim Russert, as a working guy, who was also very smart and never forgot it.
He didn`t look down on us. It wasn`t -- it was like, really, he truly respect us, we respected him. But he was a tough guy.
No, no one -- we didn`t see the partisanship there, no.
MATTHEWS: When watch him on TV as a pal -- you`re a pal?
KING: Yes, I am.
MATTHEWS: Did you see the.
KING: Machine pal.
MATTHEWS: That`s a good thing sometimes.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: We all may end up that way. The idea of -- who are you rooting for? Were you rooting for him to nail the other guy or the other guy to get past his attacks, his questions?
KING: There was a friend that wanted him to get by it. But you know, I never really saw them as being cheap shots. I mean he really gave you the chance to answer the questions. And to me, if you didn`t have the answers, it`s your own fault, because you went on there, you knew you had to be ready for a tough fight.
I never worried when I was on "Meet the Press" about some cheap shot coming from nowhere. And if he did, you know, get you the gotcha moment, it was when you had the chance to answer it and it was done in good -- not good fun, but good faith.
So, no, I always looked upon him as a good adversary and a tough guy, sort of like studying for the final exam.
(CROSSTALK)
ROBINSON: I think it always was the sense, though, that if you got it on "Meet the Press," if he really got you, you deserved it. You know, because he had caught you in some horrible contradiction, some terrible hypocrisy, some.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
ROBINSON: You know? And -- but it was your fault. I mean, you know, he nailed you. And so there was a sense that justice was done on "Meet the Press." And.
MATTHEWS: I`m thinking.
ROBINSON: . there`s not always a sense of justice to (INAUDIBLE).
MATTHEWS: I was thinking of the big moment, the October -- the presidential campaign, which believe it or not, was going hot and heavy last October.
ROBINSON: Yes.
MATTHEWS: With Hillary Clinton as the frontrunner -- Senator Clinton from your state, and you`re very close to Hillary as her colleague.
But he asked her, where do you stand? Are you with Govern Spitzer on giving drivers licenses to people in the country illegally, knowing that she would at that moment have to choose between her alliance with the governor, her constituency of Hispanic-Americans who probably were rooting for that opportunity to get drivers licenses for some of the people.
ROBINSON: Exactly.
MATTHEWS: . who were here legally, and at the same time knowing that he was carving her against the rest of the country, which is very conservative on illegal immigration.
KING: I think that was the first major turning points of the campaign. I don`t think Hillary -- that was a really good first shot. I think after that debate.
MATTHEWS: She (INAUDIBLE)
KING: Yes, she would be. That was -- because brought Hillary down to earth.
ROBINSON: But she had a fair chance there. You could pick one. You know you could pick one and stay with it and, you know, and then you would alienate the other side. But you could have picked one and guard with it.
MATTHEWS: But she did. And then she wobbled to.
ROBINSON: But then she picked the other. And.
MATTHEWS: Yes, but she did say she was giving the drivers license, sort of. And then.
ROBINSON: Well, but then she wasn`t what she said. And then.
MATTHEWS: Right.
ROBINSON: You know, then she kind of waffled in the coming days. So it was, you know, it was.
KING: Now in fairness to my friend Hillary, there`s no way you can answer that question without antagonizing someone.
MATTHEWS: That`s right. Take it.
KING: And Tim asked the question, yes.
ROBINSON: Right. That`s why he asked the question.
MATTHEWS: But you don`t consider that a gotcha question.
KING: No, no.
MATTHEWS: . where there`s no way out?
KING: Fair comment there.
MATTHEWS: There`s no way out, right? It`s fair to catch a politician with no way out.
KING: Right.
MATTHEWS: So you`re still for peace in Northern Ireland, aren`t you?
KING: I`m (INAUDIBLE) the charge.
MATTHEWS: OK.
KING: I want peace on HARDBALL.
MATTHEWS: You`ll get it sometime. We`ll be right back where we`re back here at the one of the really nice places in America, by the way, which everybody in America should come to. The John F. Kennedy Center of Performing Arts right here in Washington, D.C.
It`s an interesting night. It`s been thundering. We did see that. We got to take another look in a moment. It`s an incredible double rainbow. You only see a couple of them in your life. It`s like a solar eclipse. But we have one right here. We just -- there it is. Look at that. One of our producers, colleague took that.
Anyway, the memorial service is just over for Tim. We`re going to talk more about Tim. And it is really the last of the ritual ceremonies for Tim. We had the viewing last night and we had the church service this morning.
And I want to talk a little bit about that. And then we have this wonderful moment this afternoon. And there`s -- look at that, Tom Brokaw, looking 33 years old there. Look at the age of these guys.
Anyway, we`ll be right back with more on Tim Russert.
