I don't think Matthews understands weak sarcasm. He's reading whatever Phillips said as subversive but hearing it reiterated here makes it seem like he was comparing the possibility of the certificate being fake to an improbably complex conspiracy. Granted he's still feeding into a subset of idiots who will take that as a wink to the doubters but honestly Matthews is only turning it further into a serious statement rather than a simple piece of meaningless conversation.

Fact is every person who's been annoyed or bullied into defending the citizenship of the President has fed into the delusions of the people who insist of creating conflict and conspiracy where none exists and therefore it's become an issue. Unfortunately we're not a culture who can simply ignore something so baseless and divisive until it goes away and it's become the most important "argument" in politics. It's no different than having pundits argue and scream over the "scandal" surrounding whether or not Obama wore a flag pin on his lapel. It's all just a calculated distraction from issues that ACTUALLY MATTER to people and it shrouds the important problems in a fog of gossip and tabloid smearing.

I don't see this as Chris Matthews "smacking down" or "roasting" Birthers, I see it as another theatrical debate between an idea that's being constantly forced back up well past it's point of useful discourse. It's like the media is insisting on eating it's own vomit thinking that at some point it'll start to taste delicious. We don't need to force the idiots who still think the citizenship is a fraud to admit that they were wrong on TV because everyone's already either recognized it's real or are one of those that won't change their opinion even in the face of irrefutable evidence. Or they're like the 99% of Americans who just don't give a shit and would rather our elected officials focus on things like how to end our wars or how to get people back to work.