Prof. Ryan Schools Little Chrissy Tingles

Rep. Paul Ryan appeared to be having a ball with Chris Matthews and why not?  Matthews tried to play a game of gottcha with Ryan and ended up getting his tushy tanned.  Matthews clearly needs to brush up on his math skills.  Note, from the transcript available at Newsbusters:

RYAN: This year, Congress isn`t even doing a budget, but, last year, when we did a budget, I brought a budget to the floor that specifically cut $4.8 trillion of spending out of the budget and paid for all of these tax cuts and debt reduction. Two months ago, we put out $1.3 trillion in very specifically listed and enumerated spending cuts. So, I can go on with you on cuts. I can show you all the kinds of cuts.

Good answer, right? Here was Matthews' astonishingly addle-minded response:

MATTHEWS: But that`s one-three hundredth (ph) of the deficit. That`s 0.3 of 1 percent you`ve talked about.

One-three hundredth of the deficit? $1.3 TRILLION?

The lesson continued:

RYAN: Four-point-eight trillion dollars is not .3 of 1 percent of the deficit.

MATTHEWS: OK, 4.8 trillion. OK.

Question of the day:  How much self-control did Ryan employ to keep from yelling out, "DUMBASS!"?  Let's watch:

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I don't think we will be see Ryan back on Hardball anytime soon.