Former MSNBC Host Chris Matthews Speaks For First Time Since Abrupt Retirement, Admits Inappropriate Behavior

Chris Matthews is opening up about his abrupt retirement from MSNBC, admitting that he acted in an “inappropriate” way toward a colleague and saying he accepts the consequences.

Matthews spoke to Vanity Fair about the claims that he harassed journalist Laura Bassett. As the New York Post noted, she claimed in a column for GQ magazine that Matthews made her uncomfortable in a 2016 encounter in which he looked over at her as she was in a makeup chair and said, “Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?”

Matthews said that he did not argue the incident or deny it, and now recognizes that his remarks were inappropriate.

“I accepted the credibility of the complaint in [Bassett’s] article,” he told Vanity Fair.

“I didn’t want to challenge the person that made the complaint and wrote the article. I thought it was very credible and certainly within the person’s rights to write that article, of course. That was highly justified. Basically, as I said, to repeat myself, it’s inappropriate in the workplace to compliment somebody on their appearance, this is in the makeup chair, and I did it.”

Three days after Bassett’s allegations were first raised, Matthews abruptly resigned from his position as host of Hardball, which he had held for two decades.

Matthews was in the center of controversy at the time he announced his resignation during the middle of a broadcast. At the time, Jewish groups were demanding an apology of the MSNBC host after he made comments comparing a possible Democratic primary victory for Bernie Sanders to Nazi Germany’s invasion of France during World War II.

The group IfNotNow, an American progressive Jewish advocacy group, noted that Matthews had made two separate Nazi comparisons when talking about Sanders, a Jewish candidate with family members who were killed in the Holocaust. As The Inquisitr reported at the time, the progressive media watchdog Media Matters for America had also called on Matthews to resign or retire after the controversial comments about Sanders, and other surrogates for the Vermont senator called on MSNBC to remove him from political coverage, saying he could not report fairly.

As CNN Business reported at the time of Matthews’ announcement, management at MSNBC had pressed the Hardball host into announcing his retirement. Citing sources at the network, the report claimed that his decision to leave his post was a “firing that was masked as a retirement announcement.”