Ex-MSNBC host praises Trump's political instincts, ability to connect to country culturally
"He's very good at knowing your condition, your worries, your insecurities. I mean, he'd be a great bully in a grade school, a Catholic high school or grade school. I mean, he'd be the scariest bully because he'd know everybody's weakness. But he's really good at the moment. I mean, he's out there watching television and keeping up, and, 'Is this the right thing to do, what we're doing right now?'" Mattews told Rose. "Biden couldn't do that in a million years, not a million years. Mondale couldn't do that. They don't have the connection to the electricity of what's going on in the country culturally. And he knows what works."
Matthews, the former host of "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on MSNBC, spoke to Rose during his show, "A Charlie Rose Global Conversation."
Rose began the discussion by asking Matthews how he would rate the president as a politician.
"We have never had a president so instantly spontaneous that he knows this minute, if he had said at four o'clock this afternoon, he would say, 'You know, that's not really true anymore.' He will know the mood of the country. I once had a talk with him about the 'Zoolander' movie, Ben Stiller movie, and he said, 'Zoolander 1,' good timing. 'Zoolander 2,' didn't work. He's instantaneous," Matthews said.
The former MSNBC host said Trump knew how to put down Jeb Bush and several of his GOP opponents.
Matthews also argued that Trump was a strong public figure.
"His strength is still greater than the Democratic strength," he told Rose. "He is a stronger public figure than the Democratic people. I mean, Obama still has tremendous charisma, but Trump has strength. And I think that's what all voters look for. They want a president who is a strong figure. And he's got it. It's just there. And half the country buys it."
He also said that he didn't believe polls that showed Trump's popularity slipping.
"To be honest with you, the country is moving towards Trump!" Matthews told Rose. "These polls, they come out and show him not doing well, I don't buy that."
Matthews offered some political praise for Trump earlier this year over his efforts against elite institutions.
"I have to say that the administration sometimes sets its targets in the right direction. The elite universities in this country are not exactly covered in roses right now in the way that they handled these demonstrations," Matthews said during MSNBC's "Morning Joe" in April.
Matthews lamented that protests over the Israel-Hamas war over the last year prevented students from going to class, and said every student - Jewish or not - had a right to attend the classes they're paying for at universities like Harvard.
"And the fact that they had to be told to do this, they had to be told to let students go to school, which is what this is about, that they had to be told to do, that they had a problem in their own heads. So I think the elite universities are taking a beating right now. It's probably a smart move," he said at the time.
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