MSNBC's "Hardball" host Chris Matthews has repeatedly compared President Donald Trump and his family to the Romanovs, despite the historical context of the Russian royal family being slaughtered at the start of what would become the communist Soviet Union.
Matthews, who began making the comparison between the two families last April, has repeatedly referenced the Romanovs when discussing Trump, his daughter Ivanka, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who he says are always with each other.
"I don't know if you have noticed this about this administration, Trump, he's sort of like-- I've compared it to a royal family like the Romanovs, the last royal family of Russia," Matthews said.
"I've said the Romanovs because there's something about the president who presumes that this is a royal family taking its place at the table of power. It is is un-American. It is untraditional. It's somewhat weird," Matthews said another time.
Matthews has repeated the comparison at least 15 times since spring 2017, despite receiving backlash from former CNN anchor Piers Morgan that April.
"I watched–Chris Matthews, wasn’t it?–talking about them being the Romanovs – the Trumps. He ended up by saying – not just a comparison to the Romanovs, who were this royal family in Russia for 300 years – but said, ‘And we know how that ended,'" Morgan said.
Morgan went on to explain how the last of the Romanovs were killed in 1918 by communists.
"Whatever your view of the Romanovs, that’s not really a comparison I don’t think anyone in the American media should be making about the Trump family," he said. "What are we supposed to deduce from that comment – that, somehow, Jared, Ivanka, and Donald are all going to be murdered by communists?"
Matthews was asked by MSNBC host Brian Williams in December why he continued to compare the Trumps and Romanovs. "He's almost like a NBA star," Matthews said in response. "He has to have his entourage with him, but his entourage is always Ivanka and his son-in-law and they're always sitting around him. You see a picture of the cabinet meeting and they're around him like a royal family."
"Of course the Romanovs didn't end too well," Matthews said, prompting him to laugh."It's not a perfect model."