Matthews: Angry White Guys Want to Erase Obama from the History Books

MATTHEWS: “My theory, Molly —“

BALL: “Yes, Chris?”

MATTHEWS: “And I’m not a person of color but I do have particularly theory about this charge. I think the really angry guy out there, mostly guy, white guy, thinks if he can erase him from that picture book we get as kids of the presidents, you know, it begins with George Washington through Lincoln through Roosevelt, and there is a president who is black, they want to like make sure he is not really there. Somehow that book has an asterisk. You know, like Pete Rose, he didn’t really — get in the hall of fame. He didn’t get in there. Somehow he’s not there. Why do they keep picking at it. Because they do. And all the polls — he’s 43 percent of Republicans say he’s a Muslim. Where do they get that from?” 

BALL: “Well look, this is the sense in which Donald Trump is pandering to a market need, right? There’s a number of people — and I think that the president’s analysis that there is — this is a time of rapid social change, that he is a representative of and there are a lot of people who feel dislocated by that, who feel uncomfortable with that and it’s not only about this president, it’s about a lot of things happening in this country. And it’s also about these economic woes that he [crosstalk] interestingly does not associate himself with. He doesn’t see himself as part of this narrative.”

MATTHEWS: “Well, he — he doesn’t see a part of it.”

BALL: “He doesn’t think that the troubles that the country is going through have anything to do with him. He is talking like a sociology professor, the way he explains this staff.”