While discussing the power of President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner on Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews remarked that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini did one good thing by executing his son-in-law.

Matthews said, “And now we find Kushner, in the Middle East, brokering the Middle East peace process, whatever it is, among the Arabs and the Israelis and Likud and everybody else. Meanwhile, Tillerson’s sitting around doing what? He can’t even appoint his own deputies. The power seems to have gone to the son-in-law. This is the Romanovs. Just a thought, the Romanovs. Is it?”

He later added, “And then you find out, in all these investigations that Jared was opening up a tunnel to Moscow, so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the State Department. So, the son-in-law — you know, one good thing Mussolini did was execute his son-in-law. … I know that was an extreme measure. But this was — this is a strange situation.”

(h/t NewsBusters)

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett