Chris Matthews Calendar: So the Recession Did Start Before Bush Took Office

Media Matters catches Chris Matthews blaming 9/11 on Bill Clinton. Read the whole post but let me take this excerpt:

GREEN: Symbolically it’s a good idea, because they hit us there, and let the world come together there. But I disagree on Bush and protecting New York. It was eight years between the first and the second World Trade Center attacks. As a New Yorker who saw the plane go into the World Trade Center on the day I had an election — of course I’m relieved there’s no attack, but for one day — for four days of the Iraq war, we can inspect not 5 percent of all containers coming into this city, but 20 percent. We could protect every airliner with antimissile devices. So since terrorism around the world has tripled, I’m not satisfied, oh, we haven’t been hit in New York. The war in Iraq has increased terrorism, isolated America. We’re spending it in the wrong place.
McFARLAND: Well, now, wait a minute.
MATTHEWS: Who was president from ’93 to 2001? Who was president of the United States?
GREEN: You know the answer.
MATTHEWS: Bill Clinton. Do you think he did a good job of stopping a second attack on the World Trade Center when he was president for eight years?
GREEN: We can’t know whether he stopped it. Richard Clarke —
MATTHEWS: We know he didn’t stop it.
GREEN: Richard Clarke’s book said that Clinton was on the case on terrorism. Sandy Berger said, when he briefed Condoleezza Rice, he said your number one issue will be terrorism –
McFARLAND: Tell that to 2,000 people who died.

We know that NBER dates the last recession as beginning in March 2001. My understanding is that George W. Bush took office on January 20, 2001 so all those claims that the recession began before Bush took office make no sense according to my calendar. But maybe my calendar is off a bit. The only way this rant from Chris Matthews makes any sense would be for George W. Bush to have taken the oath of office on September 20, 2001.