Ex-FEMA director Michael Brown went on MSNBC today to defend his claims about the Gulf Coast oil spill, and Chris Matthews let him have it, telling him that Brown’s theory that President Obama wanted the oil spill to happen makes him sound “insane.”
Brown had appeared on Fox News yesterday accusing Obama of delaying the federal response to the oil spill out of “pure politics,” so that he could “pander to the environmentalists” on offshore drillling “and say, ‘I’m gonna shut it down because it’s too dangerous.'”
[TPM SLIDESHOW: Fire In The Gulf: New Pictures Of The Deepwater Horizon]
In a somewhat rambling appearance on Hardball today, Brown again reiterated this:
We’re seeing the Rahm Emanuel rule #1 taking effect, and that is to let no crisis go unused. So this is an opportunity for a President who wants to bankrupt the coal industry, and basically get rid of the oil and gas industry, to shut down offshore drilling.
Matthews called him out on this, asking: “Don’t you know that what you’re saying, to a third party, not somebody like myself or somebody like yourself listening to you, thinks that you’re sounding insane?”
Brown also weirdly implied that the explosion was an act by terrorists who “don’t give a rat’s butt about ecology,” though when asked whether there was any indication of this, he replied, “no, not yet.”
Watch:
