MSNBC's Chris Matthews Explores Bobby Kennedy's Legacy

Steve Adubato goes one-on-one with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews about his latest book exploring the life and legacy of Bobby Kennedy.

1/22/18 #2105

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Welcome to One on One. I'm Steve Adubato. Coming to from WNET's Tisch Lincoln Center Studio. We are honored to welcome Chris Matthews. The one and only Chris Matthews. I hope I'm the one and only. Yeah, Chris is seen on Hardball every night. Seven? Yes. Eastern. I know, I check it every night. Every night. But we're here to talk about your book. Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit. Talk to us. This book, so powerful in so many ways. Why Bobby Kennedy? Well I didn't realize when I began the project years ago that it would become the 180 degrees of what we have right now. Empathy, unity of white and black together, a moral compass, all the things we miss right now. We lack right down. We want in our leadership. And he, you know he wasn't a perfect man, but he exemplified those things. He could walk into a... what we used to call "a ghetto situation" in Indianapolis and tell these people, right in front of African-Americans, Martin Luther King was just shot and killed by a white guy. He had to tell them. They didn't know that. And I had the mic as I was working with NBC, you could hear him on the mic saying to the guy next to him, he's up on a flatbed truck looking in the face of the people, and he... and they're all cheering him, and he goes, "Do they know yet?" And the guy says, "No, they don't know. You gotta tell them." And this was before Twitter and everything. And you had... word of mouth was the way you learned the news, and it showed his ability to connect with people when he just took his skin off, and said, "Like my brother was killed by a white guy, we've got to get through this. We've got to figure this thing out." And you know, and he talked about, you know, "You've got to make an effort." I thought that line in that speech, "We've got to make an effort," is the best thing anybody's ever said. Because when it comes to race relations, all you can do is make an effort. You're not gonna solve it. It's all you can do. You're not gonna... but if everybody makes an effort, wow, and he, but you know he had guts, he'd go to college kids like at Notre Dame and say, "You guys are sitting on your fat butts with your college deferments and the working guy is out to go in a war." You know, he'd go to lumberjacks in Oregon, in Roseburg, right? Where they had that shooting a couple of years ago, a mass shooting, and say, "You know, we're gonna have to stop this mail order rifle buying," you..."