MSNBC host Chris Matthews apologized on air to Bernie Sanders, after receiving widespread backlash and calls to resign for comparing Sanders’s landslide win in the Nevada caucuses to the Nazi takeover of France.

Chris Matthews: “As I watched the one-sided results of Saturday’s Democratic caucus in Nevada, I reached for an historical analogy and used a bad one. I was wrong to refer to an event from the last days — or, actually, the first days of World War II. Senator Sanders, I’m sorry for comparing anything from that tragic era in which so many suffered, especially the Jewish people, to an electoral result in which you were the well-deserved winner. This is going to be a hard-fought, heated campaign of ideas in the days and weeks and months ahead. I will strive to do a better job myself of elevating the political discussion.”