Chris Matthews announced during his long-running television show Hardball that Monday night’s episode of the program would be his last.
“Let me start with my headline tonight: I’m retiring. This is the last Hardball on MSNBC,” Matthews said at the opening of the episode. “As you can tell, I’ve loved every minute of my 20 years as host of Hardball,” Matthews went on, adding “Every morning I read the papers, and am gung-ho to get to work. Not many people have had this privilege.”
— The ReidOut (@thereidout) March 3, 2020
However, after conversations with parent network NBC, Matthews agreed to step down. The decision follows journalist Laura Bassett’s allegations on GQ magazine that Matthews had made inappropriate comments about her appearance in the makeup room over several instances when Bassett was invited as a guest on Hardball.
“Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?” Matthews asked Bassett before one episode. Another time, Matthews told her makeup artist, “Make sure you wipe this off her face after the show. We don’t make her up so some guy at a bar can look at her like this.”
“Compliments on a woman’s appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were okay were never okay, not then and certainly not today,” Matthews said. “For making such comments in the past, I’m sorry.”
Bassett wrote that she had detailed her experience with Matthews in 2017 without naming the long-time anchor for fear of retribution, but that since then she grew ready to speak out. She said Matthews’s comments did not “rise to the level of illegal sexual harassment. But it undermined my ability to do my job well.”