Chris Matthews was Jay Leno's guest on Thursday's Tonight Show.
Matthews was more of a babbling blowhard than usual, at times incoherent. 
Leno, for his part, accepted Matthews' drivel, not questioning most of his nonsense. Basically, Leno just kept setting Matthews up with topics.
It amounted to a monologue.
Transcript
On the BP Oil Spill
JAY LENO: This BP thing, this is the one-month anniversary. Where are we?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yeah, it's the scariest thing I've ever seen. And you know, I don't know where to start. I mean, Halliburton. Sound familiar? Cheney. Cheney was head of Halliburton. When he got to be vice president, when he was signed for vice president, the oil company gave him a $34 million signing bonus to become vice president of the United States.
LENO: Really?
MATTHEWS: Yeah, that's what they gave him, a cash check for 34 million bucks to become vice president. Do you think they had an interest in this guy? So the time he's vice president of the United States, he began holding secret meetings with the oil company. The press wasn't allowed in. BP, private meetings with BP, all along the way, and an interesting little deal there going on.
Then you find out that a lot of the so-called regulation of this industry is really BP people that have gotten jobs, or Halliburton people that have gotten jobs in the government who are supposedly watching this.
I did an investigative piece on the oil industry for the Washington Post back 37 years ago. And I found there were 220,000 miles of oil pipeline in this country. They got one federal guy looking out for this. It's a joke. They do not regulate the oil industry.
...
LENO: Hey, let me ask you something now: Why is Cheney so quiet now? He was all over the place.
MATTHEWS: Because he's got a lot to hide. I mean all the money... I just keep wondering why would an oil company give a guy 34 million bucks when he becomes vice president of the United States? Well, one thing might be for good will. So what's good will? Private meetings... The energy policy of the previous eight years was written in the back room with Cheney and the oil companies, and that's a fact. They don't have any regulation.
Now here, my brother was a pipeline engineer for 33 years. He called me up the minute this thing hit, and said, 'You know what they're supposed to do when they dig a hole in the ground under the ocean, under the Gulf of Mexico? Pack it with the drilling mud that they made, that they got when they were drilling. Pack it down in there.' Dirt's heavier than water, right? It keeps it down. What did this company do? It packed the hole with seawater to save money. And looked what happened.
And now what are they gonna do? They announced today they're gonna pack it with mud. They're gonna now do what they coulda done a month ago. And these are the facts. It's not being done right. It's scares the heck out of me.
That oil is destroying a good part of our world down there in the Gulf of Mexico. You look at the oil, we just had Ed Markey on tonight, the congressman who's head of the energy committee. They have turned out, it turns out that they're not pumping out 5,000 barrels a day, not gallons, barrels a day. They're pumping out about 40- to 50,000 barrels a day coming out of that hole into that Gulf, and it's under the water. And there's a big danger here that the government's not telling us the truth about how much is down there, how much is all over the Gulf now.
It's going around Florida. It's heading up, it's gonna head up to North Carolina. It's gonna be horrendous, and I'm just wondering when we're gonna just blow the whistle. I don't know what you have to do.
The president scares me. He's been acting a little bit like, you know, Vatican observer here. When is he gonna actually do something? And I worry. I know he doesn't want to take ownership of it. I know the politics, 'cause the minute he says 'I'm in charge' then he's blamed. But somebody's gonna have to take charge. This is in our interest. It's not the oil company's interest. They're gonna make a lot of money.
In sum, Matthews declares that Vice President Cheney is to blame for the BP oil spill. Of course. Spoken like a true, dyed-in-the-wool liberal.
It's not as if Obama just got into office. The buck stops with him.
On Rush Limbaugh
LENO: Now what do you think of Rush Limbaugh saying that environmentalists should clean this up and it's their fault?
MATTHEWS: Well, he would say that. He's a joke. Rush Limbaugh is totally pro-industry, totally pro-business. Never would say, he's never said a word against offshore drilling in his entire life. Look it up. And for him to come out and blame the environmentalists -- what a joke!
You know, we have a thing on our show now -- we're waiting for one Republican officeholder of the United States, on any issue, to announce they disagree with Rush Limbaugh on anything.
LENO: And not one has come forward.
MATTHEWS: He's the boss.
LENO: Not one has come forward.
MATTHEWS: He's the boss. He tells them what they want to say. He's the head of that party right now. And you know, he's a smart guy. He's a showman. And none of these guys want to take him on. We're hoping that somebody will have some guts.
Limbaugh is not the head of the Republican Party.
He doesn't set the agenda. He's not the boss. That's such a lame Dem talking point.
On Arizona's Immigration Law
LENO: President Obama had dinner with the Mexican president. Your view on this immigration law.
MATTHEWS: Well, I think, I'm looking at the polls, and the people don't, don't like exactly the way Arizona did it, but they want something done. And the problem is that we keep passing laws every 20 years and not enforcing them.
Now I think the way to do it is something fair. And Ted Kennedy was for this before he died. It's a fair solution. If you're in this country, you've been living here for a couple years, and you've got kids in school, and you're obeying the law, and you're trying to become an American, a real good American, you're learning the language, you're doing everything right except you didn't come here legally, there could be a way eventually to become an American citizen. Most people are for that.
Number two: What's part of the deal, part of the deal -- no more illegal immigration.
And I think you're asking police officers in Arizona to enforce a law that business doesn't want to enforce. So, if you can get a job in this country and you're poor living in Guatemala or somewhere, you're gonna try to come over and get it. So what stands between you and the job? Not the employer. He's ready to hire you. It's the cop. So there's gonna be some scary stuff when a guy gets confronted by a police officer and that guy knows he's going back home and leaving his family here to starve maybe, and that cop's between him and getting away from that. We're gonna have some serious problems.
I think it ought to be very simple. You pull the card out. You say I'm here legally or you don't get the job. And I think that's a simple answer. When you're 21, you gotta have the card.
The trouble is, Jay, the problem is this: Business doesn't want it 'cause they want cheap labor. And they want more cheap labor every year. What's the best worker in America? The guy that just got here, scared to death, tries to work his butt off. They wanted cheap labor. Number two-- all the industry wants the cheap labor. And number two, the Hispanic groups are very concerned about prejudice against them. I understand that. About profiling, I understand that. The Republicans want the cheap labor. The Democrats are worried about the politics. Nobody wants to do anything. And so you occasionally find a couple of politicians say, 'Look, let's square the circle.' Nobody's getting thrown out of this country who really wants to be a good American. But number two-- every country has the right to regulate who comes in. You can't go to France and go walk in and say 'I'm here.'
LENO: Well, the president of Mexico, he's lecturing us about Arizona. If you sneak in to Mexico from Guatemala, they deport you the same day.
MATTHEWS: Yeah, I think there's a lot of hypocrisy. I think the solution's there if the politicians don't have the guts to do it. But you know, our president hasn't stepped up to the plate.
Talk about a rambling mess!
People in the country ILLEGALLY didn't do everything right. They entered ILLEGALLY.
Why would an ILLEGAL who's deported leave his family in this country to starve? Starving here? I don't think so.
On one hand, Matthews says illegals should be allowed to stay. On the other hand, he calls for no more illegals entering the country. He's pro-amnesty, but he doesn't say how to prevent more illegals from coming in.
Immigrants need a card? Sounds a lot like papers to me.
His characterization of the Arizona police isn't very complimentary.
And Matthews conveniently just glosses over Calderon's stunning hypocrisy.
On Rand Paul
LENO: How about this Rand Paul, this crazy statement he made?
MATTHEWS: Well, he's a philosopher and philosophers shouldn't run for office. He's an absolute purist. He believes the federal government shouldn't be able to tell a guy who owns a small business they have to serve people of different colors and all.
You know, I heard a story years ago that really got to me. And I'm obviously not a minority. It was a guy named Paul [?] who worked for Bobby Kennedy. And Bobby Kennedy was a good guy but he wasn't really passionate about civil rights. And he said to him, imagine you're a guy, like you, but you're black. And you're driving around the country, say you're driving up 95 now, in the old days, and your wife has to go to the bathroom.... And you got to stop at a gas station, and the guy says, 'You can't have your wife go to the bathroom here.' Imagine the humiliation, the frustration you feel. In my country, my wife can't go to the bathroom here....
We had a horrible system in this country, discrimination. And the federal government had to step in. And I think Rand Paul ought to think about that before he comes out with these absolutes about the federal government being the bad guy. This is a case the federal government was the good guy.
In effect, Matthews is saying that a vote for Rand Paul is a vote for racism. What is that?
On the Tea Party Movement
LENO: Is this Tea Party thing gonna weaken the Republican Party?
MATTHEWS: They're gonna have to choose, you know, whether they want somebody... you know, Palin's good at it. She's a great politician. And this, what's her name, Bachmann, Michele Bachmann's another good one. And they got this new one out there, Nikki, Nikki Haley down in South Carolina. They're all very attractive candidates. They know the business. They know how to get an applause. The problem is they don't really know much. You know, they really don't know much....
Katie Couric still asked the best question in the world, the best journalist question in years: 'What do you read?' A stumper. Boy, that was a curve ball. You know, what do you read? Duhhhh! You know? So the problem is that they got a very attractive candidate and then they got boring people like Mitt Romney who have no charisma. And so they got on one side they got really charismatic people that don't know anything, and on the other side they got people who know a lot who have no charisma. They got a problem.
So, Barack Obama may be the luckiest guy in history. He might just run against someone that can't beat him. Fine with me.
Yes, we know that Matthews would love to see Obama have a second term. We know that would be fine with him.
What's really boring is Matthews trotting out the old "Sarah Palin is stupid" lines.
Why didn't Matthews talk about the Democrats' problems, such as liars like Richard Blumenthal?
Why didn't Leno bring up Blumenthal's lies about serving in Vietnam?
Another good topic would have been the way Obama and the White House shut out the press.
But nooooooo.
Whenever Matthews is on Leno, I understand why MSNBC has such dismal ratings.
Video.
Matthews makes a "joke" at the expense of Chelsea Handler.
CHELSEA HANDLER: Could you talk faster?
MATTHEWS: You know, my dear, you're beautiful; but if you concentrate, you can keep up.
Handler said she gave Matthews that line backstage.
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