MSNBC’s Matthews Defends Rice — Suggests Gender Is Motivation of Critics, Calls Tom Cotton ‘Bates Motel’

Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews called Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) “Bates Motel,” referring to the fictional character Norman Bates from “Psycho,” in retaliation for Cotton calling President Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice “Typhoid Mary” in responding to reports Rice unmasked members of Donald Trump’s transition team.

Matthews also said, “Notice it’s always a female? Just a thought.”

Partial transcript as follows:

MATTHEWS: OK “Bates Motel.” Anyway, Mike Huckabee tweeted yesterday, Donald Trump will await an apology from the media now that he has revealed Susan Rice unmasked names. Orange jumpsuit in her insight. I mean Huckabee has no shame. These guys are trooping along like camp followers of Trump.

MARKS: These guys are looking for a pinata. They found one in Susan Rice. I do think —

MATTHEWS: Notice it’s always a female? Just a thought.

MARKS: That’s also true. But I do think she slightly played into that hand.

MATTHEWS: Typhoid Mary?

MARKS: No, clearly not. But the best things —

MATTHEWS: Susan Rice’s job is to watch national security. As she told Andrea today, our colleague, she made it very clear today what she was doing was making sure when she saw an American name show up in a surveillance of a foreign, perhaps agent, she wanted to know who that was. What’s wrong with that?

MARKS: I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with it. I think unfortunately for Susan Rice, she’s given two contradictory interviews, an interview to PBS a couple weeks ago where she said nothing to see here —

MATTHEWS: She said there was no surveillance. She wasn’t saying she didn’t pick up some names by asking through proper authority who are they talking about. By the way, this is all after the election. This wasn’t politics.

CORN: At the end of the day, we need some element of decency. When Rand Paul gets out there and says she’s abused this right, there is not an iota of evidence that she’s abused anything. Calling her Typhoid Mary—all we know now is that she did her job. Did she do something wrong? There is no information indicating that. So they are making her, you know, basically, they’re defaming her without any reason to do so because she’s a woman. Maybe because she’s a black woman. Maybe because they didn’t like her during Benghazi. This is all about the —

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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