February 23, 2020

Time magazine editor Anand Giridharadas criticized MSNBC host Chris Matthews over the weekend for his alleged bias against Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Giridharadas remarks came after Matthews compared Sanders' win in Nevada to a Nazi invasion.

"Last night was a historic win that I think a lot of us are still struggling to understand," Giridharadas explained. "It's historic because we may be seeing that we are paddling through a bend of a river in history here. Something is happening in America right now that actually does not fit our mental models."

"It certainly doesn't fit the mental models of a lot of people on TV," he continued. "It doesn't fit the mental models of a lot of people in the parties. It doesn't fit our cultural mental models."

Giridharadas called it a "wake-up moment" for pundits.

"Many of this establishment are behaving in my view as they face the prospect of a Bernie Sanders nomination like out-of-touch aristocrats in a dying aristocracy" he said. "Just sort of, 'How do we stop this, how do we block this?'"

"This is a moment for curiosity in America," Giridharadas told MSNBC host Joy Reid. "I think about this network, which I love, which you love. And I think we have to look within also. Why is a lobbyist for Uber and Mark Zuckerberg on the air many nights explaining a political revolution to us? 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?"

According to Giridharadas, people like Matthews are "missing what's going on of what may be, frankly, a new era in American life."

Reid responded by asking to "defend my friend Chris Matthews."

"I don't think he was trying to make an anti-Jewish disparagement of Mr. Sanders," Reid said. "I think what he's speaking to is that there is a cultural revulsion to the idea of socialism among people of Chris' generation."

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