Appearing on yet another imbalanced Chris Matthews Show panel, CNN and PBS host Tucker Carlson echoed the false GOP talking point that Senator John Kerry focused exclusively on Vietnam and “refused to talk about” the war in Iraq “for two years.” As Media Matters for America has noted, Kerry talked about Iraq throughout his campaign for president and laid out a proposal for creating a stable Iraq.

Matthews's other panelists on the January 2 show were BBC Washington correspondent Katty Kay, former ABC News anchor Sam Donaldson, and NBC Weekend Today co-anchor Campbell Brown. It is not surprising that Matthews rang in the New Year with a panel that skewed to the right: As Media Matters has documented, of the 46 panels convened in 2004 on The Chris Matthews Show, 22 skewed to the right, twelve featured only journalists or contained an equal number of liberals and conservatives, seven skewed to the left, and five featured a conservative who supported Kerry on an otherwise balanced panel.