Chris Matthews: Rep. Peter King’s ‘Show Trials’ Are ‘Grand Character Assassination’

Criticism continues of Republican Congressman Peter King‘s efforts to hold congressional hearings on the potential radicalization of Muslim Americans. First Jon Stewart noticed King’s past sympathies for a different type of terrorist organization and The New York Times dug deeper into King’s potentially hypocritcal background with the I.R.A. Now Chris Matthews is piling on too, calling King’s “show trials” of Muslim Americans “appalling.”

Matthews welcomed two guests who disagreed with King’s approach: Irish lobbyist Niall O’Dowd, who earlier suggested King was on “a strange journey from Irish radical to Muslim inquisitor,” and Jack O’Reilly, Mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, a city with a large Muslim population. O’Dowd argued all Muslims do not deserve to be demonized when only a small amount of extremists are the problem. He predicted that King was just screaming about Muslims in order to generate “easy headlines” and raise his own stature in Congress. O’Reilly worried that the outcome of these hearings has already been determined before any fact-finding began, and said King was “misinformed.”

Matthews summed up the critique by suggesting that King’s attempt to cast such a giant net encompassing all religious followers of Islam was a form of “grand character assassination.” King though has yet to back down, and nothing said here seems likely to change his mind.

Watch the clip from MSNBC below:

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