Chris Matthews continued his diatribe against Sen. John McCain's (R., Ariz.) questioning of Chuck Hagel Friday on MSNBC. Matthews floated his theory that Sen. McCain was actually having a "flashback" during the hearing and McCain's "anger" towards Hagel could be related to his experience in Vietnam:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I'm Chris Matthews in Washington. Let me start with this. Why is John McCain so angry? Forty years after the Vietnam POWs came home, the most famous of them is angrier than ever. Why is America, why are we fighting the Vietnam War all over again in the United States Senate? The ticked off vitriol against Chuck Hagel - what's it about? Is it for show? Is it about something Hagel said in the cloakroom? Is it the unfairness of Vietnam itself that some went and some didn't? Is it about Lyndon Johnson's inability to win that war or end it? What is it that burns so deeply in John McCain these days? It seems to excite those who knew nothing about Vietnam but want to replay it in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Libya and Syria, and eventually in Iran. We dig into the deep well of resentment burning in John McCain's patriotic heart. A resentment not against the north Vietnamese who imprisoned and tortured him all those years, not against George W. Bush and his political henchmen who tried to stain McCain's reputation back in 2000, but against a guy who fought against fear and rallied against wounds just like he did in the same army of America's long nightmare in Vietnam, Chuck Hagel. A nightmare by the way whose flashbacks must haunt still the mind and heart of John Sidney McCain.
Full segment: