Well, that’s a new one. During Tuesday’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews wondered to newly-minted MSNBC political analyst and former Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill if President Trump truly “cares about” stopping the flow of illegal drugs from the U.S.-Mexico border, surmising that he doesn’t care about putting a halt to drugs that are killing thousands of Americans.

McCaskill had just suggested that more people be hired as “port of entry officers” because “[t]hat’s the way the drugs are coming in” when Matthews uttered his ghoulish assertion about whether the President cares about stopping the deaths of innocent Americans.

“You really think Trump cares about drugs? I think he cares about the Hispanic, the Latino people coming from below the border that his constituents are mad about. That seems to be what his — he’s playing the ethnic card here. It's not about drugs. It's ethnicity and race, I think,” Matthews exclaimed.

McCaskill immediately agreed, asserting that Trump doesn’t care “about anything but himself and keeping his base and so yes, there's an undercurrent of race there, but he keeps talking about drugs.”

“If he really cares about the drugs, he would sit down and we — they would hammer out some sort of compromise around stopping the flow of drugs through the mail and through the ports of entry,” she added before assailing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for making plans to put on the floor the compromise that the President proposed on Saturday.

It's worth noting that Trump's brother Fred died of alcoholism, so the President does know a thing or two about addiction and he's talked about the dangers of drug addiction both during the campaign and his presidency.

To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on January 22, click “expand.”