Chris Matthews

When Matthews first arrived in Washington, D.C., he worked as an officer with the United States Capitol Police. Subsequently, Matthews served on the staffs of four Democratic Members of Congress, including Senators Frank Moss and Edmund Muskie. In 1974, Matthews mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Pennsylvania's 4th congressional district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in which he received about 24% of the vote in the primary. Matthews was a presidential speechwriter during the Carter Administration, and later worked for six years as Chief of Staff to longtime Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O'Neill, playing a direct role in many key political battles with the Reagan Administration.

Matthews worked in print media for 15 years, spending 13 years as Washington, D.C. bureau chief for the San Francisco Examiner (1987–2000) and two years as a nationally syndicated columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Matthews covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first all-races election in South Africa, and the Good Friday Peace Talks in Northern Ireland. In 1997 and 1998, his research in the National Archives produced a series of exclusives on the Nixon presidential tapes. Matthews covered American presidential election campaigns from 1988 until his retirement.

In 1997, Matthews began his own weeknight talk show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, which originally aired on America's Talking and then moved to MSNBC. Hardball with Chris Matthews featured pundits and elected officials as guests.

The Chris Matthews Show aired in syndication on weekends from 2002 until 2013. The show was formatted as a political roundtable consisting of four journalists and Matthews, who served as the moderator. He is estimated to earn more than $5 million a year.

In 2002, Matthews was hospitalized with malaria, which he evidently contracted on one of his visits that year to Africa. He has also had other health problems, including diabetes (which he acknowledged having on the Hardball broadcast of December 7, 2009) and pneumonia.

In 2004, at the Democratic National Convention, Matthews predicted that he had "just seen the first black president". The Huffington Post reported on Matthews's emotional expressions of support for Barack Obama during the 2008 Presidential election, quoting him as saying: "I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often."

Matthews is the recipient of several awards, including The Pennsylvania Society's Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement in 2005, the Abraham Lincoln Award from the Union League of Philadelphia, the David Brinkley Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Award, and the 2016 Tip O'Neill Irish Diaspora Award.

On the April 14, 2008, edition of The Colbert Report, Matthews alluded to a possible run for the United States Senate from Pennsylvania. On November 28, 2008, Matthews contacted senior staffers of Barack Obama's campaign about a possible Senate run. On January 7, 2009, The New York Times reported that Matthews told his staffers that he would not run for the Senate.

In March 2012, Matthews described himself as a centrist during an episode of his MSNBC talk show Hardball. That statement was questioned by Mediaite's Josh Feldman directly afterward, based on Matthews's frequent condemnation of right-wing political figures and his emotional expression of support for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Feldman observed that Matthews has criticized liberals such as Hillary Clinton and occasionally even Barack Obama, and that this could explain Matthews's description of himself as a "centrist".

In 2013, Matthews announced that he had signed a long-term contract extension with MSNBC but that he would no longer host The Chris Matthews Show in order to focus his efforts on Hardball, writing books, and producing documentaries. The final episode of The Chris Matthews Show aired on July 21.

During the opening monologue of his Monday, March 2, 2020 show, Matthews announced his immediately-effective retirement from Hardball. MSNBC had executed a long-term contract with Matthews, in 2013, to retain him with the network at least through the 2016 election, and he was expected to retire after the 2020 election cycle, with an exit after Election Day in November 2020 likely.

Matthews was the commencement speaker at Ohio State University on May 4, 2014 and Merrimack College on May 15, 2015.

Matthews has been married since 1980 to Kathleen Matthews, who was a news anchor at WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C., before accepting a position as an executive vice president with Marriott International. In 2015, Kathleen Matthews launched an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic nomination to run for a House seat in Maryland's 8th congressional district, which has been represented by progressive Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin since 2016. The couple have three children: Michael, Thomas, and Caroline. One of his four brothers Jim Matthews, a Republican, is a former county commissioner in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

In December 2017, details surfaced of a 1999 settlement Matthews's employer, CNBC, reached with a female producer of Matthews's program who alleged Matthews made inappropriate comments about her in front of colleagues in the workplace.

In December 2018, Matthews interviewed U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who stated she was "seriously considering" running for President.

On February 7, 2020, during a panel discussion following a Democratic Party presidential candidate debate in New Hampshire, Matthews referenced Bernie Sanders' praise for aspects of Fidel Castro's Cuba, saying "[Had] Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War, there [would have been] executions in Central Park and I might have been one of the ones getting executed and certain other people would be there cheering, OK? So I have a problem with people [who] took the other side." His remarks were mocked by left-wing commentators.

In February 2020, political journalist Laura Bassett alleged that, prior to appearing on his program in October 2016, to comment on sexual assault allegations against then candidate Donald Trump, Matthews made inappropriate remarks about Bassett's makeup, clothing, and dating life. As she was having her television studio makeup applied, Matthews purportedly asked her: "Why haven't I fallen in love with you yet?" Bassett claims that when she laughed nervously and said nothing, Matthews followed up to the makeup artist with: "Keep putting makeup on her, I'll fall in love with her." In 2017, Bassett had previously published a text about the incident, which did not identify Matthews by name.

On February 22, 2020, commenting on the 2020 Nevada Democratic caucuses, Matthews invoked Winston Churchill's feeling of disbelief following the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940 as a metaphor for the feeling of disbelief experienced by establishment figures in the Democratic Party to Bernie Sanders' victory in the state. As members of Sanders's family were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, his comparison was viewed as insensitive and prompted widespread negative reactions on Twitter calling for him to be removed from MSNBC. Amid mounting criticism, Matthews issued an on-air apology to Sanders and his supporters on February 24. Sanders did not directly respond to the remarks, but instead urged the general public to focus its energies on the emerging COVID-19 pandemic.

Biden surprises birthday boy Chris Matthews

Vice President Joe Biden surprised MSNBC host Chris Matthews with a birthday cake on Friday to celebrate the longtime host's 65th birthday. Biden, who was at NBC headquarters in Washington to tape his appearance on Sunday's "Meet the Press" surprised Matthews with a cake, according to an MSNBC spokesperson. There was no word on what kind of cake the vice president got for Matthews, who's hosted the network's "Hardball" since 1997.