MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews on Wednesday night compared deceased Iranian terror master Qassem Soleimani to Elvis Presley and Princess Diana.
"When some people die, you don't know what the impact is going to be. When Princess Diana died, for example, there was a huge emotional outpouring," Matthews said. "Elvis Presley in our culture—it turns out that this general we killed was a beloved hero of the Iranian people to the point where—look at the people, we got pictures up now—these enormous crowds coming out. There's no American emotion in this case, but there's a hell of a lot of emotion on the other side."
Soleimani led the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which trained, funded, and armed Iran-sympathetic terrorist groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and around the Middle East, killing thousands, including hundreds of Americans.
"Should our leaders know what they're doing when they kill somebody?" Matthews asked Rep. Joaquin Castro (D., Texas).
Castro replied that Trump's strategy of pulling out of the nuclear deal and putting pressure on Iran has failed.
"They very much could have anticipated that Iranians would react in this way, both the Iranian public but also that the government would strike back," Castro said. "This speaks to a much larger issue, Chris, which is the president has had a very chaotic and erratic foreign policy, especially with respect to Iran."
Matthews isn't the only cable news anchor to compare Soleimani to beloved figures in the West. CNN's Anderson Cooper compared Soleimani to French president Charles de Gaulle, a leader of the French resistance against Nazi occupation during World War II.