Chris Matthews predicts Biden will make a ‘breathtaking’ comeback and prove his elite critics wrong

Amid the media frenzy surrounding whether President Joe Biden should step aside for a younger candidate, veteran political analyst Chris Matthews is swimming against the tide.

Matthews, who hosted “Hardball” on MSNBC from 1997 to 2020, appeared on “Morning Joe” on Thursday and predicted that Biden’s “elitist” critics would be proven wrong and “pay for it.”

Matthews’ appearance came ahead of Biden’s press conference Thursday evening following the NATO summit, where the president reiterated that he has no intention of dropping out of the race.

Interestingly, Matthews, a former aide to House Speaker Tip O’Neill, and MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, a former aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, are among Biden’s staunchest defenders at MSNBC.

Matthews, the results were presented by In fact, a poll conducted by the Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos found that most Democrats (56 percent to 42 percent) thought Biden should end his re-election campaign after his poor performance in the debate.

But the Post reported that Biden and former President Donald Trump are in a neck-and-neck race for the majority of votes, with each candidate receiving 46 percent support among registered voters. These numbers are almost identical to the results of a ABC-Ipsos poll in April. The latest poll results also showed that 92 percent of Democrats said they intend to vote for Biden.

And Matthews had this to say about Biden’s political standing among Democrats.

“Right now he has the poor, he has the minorities, he has the Hispanics, he will lift up the working class, he will hold the Democratic Party base that he will need in November,” Matthews said.

“And I tell you, people will be for him in October because he will make a comeback,” he added. “And then they will pay for this attack on him by the elite. But in the end they will vote for him.”

Matthews’ comments about Biden’s “elitist” critics came days after actor George Clooney, a major donor, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times saying Democrats need a new candidate because Biden, 81, is too old. Other Hollywood liberals, including Rob Reiner and Michael Douglas, expressed similar views, as did a small number of Democratic lawmakers.

Matthews said Biden would be much more likely to listen to First Lady Jill Biden than someone like Clooney.

“Who is he going to listen to now – Jill or George Clooney?” asked Matthews. “I’m telling you, it’s a personal matter.”

And he predicted:

“I think Biden is going to be the little guy who is going to be the Democrat in this race, the real Democrat, and he’s going to get people to rally for him in October. That’s going to be breathtaking. He’s not giving up. He’s not built to give up.”

Matthews, however, criticized Biden’s White House and campaign team for keeping him in a “witness protection program” and not making the president more accessible to the press.

“You have to expose people. You have to let them see you for yourself, you have to let them see you with all the faults that you have… because then they decide they like you. The reason people like a politician is because they discover him or her. They find out who they are and they see through all the faults and say he is a good guy.

“Trump is a bad person. That has to play a role in the voting booth. … Look at how he treats people, women and everyone. How he treats his cabinet members. He throws them out the window. He fires them indiscriminately.”

Here are highlights from Thursday’s Morning Joe show. The Matthews segment begins at minute 33.

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