During MSNBC’s coverage of Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate, MSNBC host Chris Matthews stated that 2020 presidential candidate former Representative Beto O’Rourke’s (D-TX) support for mandatory buybacks for certain guns is an “extreme” position and stated, “I don’t know where you get away with that.”

Matthews stated that the debate began with pushes for unity, “then I thought some of the strong ideologues, the people who have strong agendas like Warren and Bernie Sanders were very clear where they stand. Certainly, Medicare for all, no more private insurance, absolute position on that. Bernie and her competed on paying off all the student loans. … Beto came along and said he’s going to not just buy back automatic — the semi-automatic assault rifles, but demand that they sell them back. I don’t know where you get away with that. I noticed that Kamala talked about an executive order. This would be an extraordinary ruling by the Supreme Court that would allow a president to use executive orders to demand the end of ownership by automatic weapons — by semi-automatic assault weapons. I just think these are three or four cases of extreme, ideological positions. But generally, I thought there was a pushback on that stage against the hard left. I heard a lot of calls for unity.”

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