Chris Matthews, one of the longest-tenured voices at MSNBC, announced his retirement during Monday’s night’s airing of his talk show, “Hardball.”
Matthews, 74, said he and MSNBC had mutually agreed to part ways. The decision followed a series of events that resulted in criticism of the host’s statements about Bernie Sanders, African-American lawmakers, and comments he had made to female journalists and coworkers.
“I’m retiring,” Matthews said. “This is the last ‘Hardball’ on MSNBC.” He thanked all of his colleagues for their support over the years that they worked together. At the end of his statement, the station went to a commercial break, and he did not return.
Matthews was retiring shortly with the events of the past week playing a factor in the timing of the move, an MSNBC spokesperson said.
Chris Matthews, a former speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, has hosted “Hardball” on MSNBC since 1999 and remained a centrist voice on the cable news channel’s prime-time programming, which often features commentary that is further to the left.
Sexual harassment allegations Against Chris Matthews
In December 2017, details surfaced of a 1999 settlement Matthews’ employer, CNBC, reached with a female producer of Matthews’ program who alleged Matthews made inappropriate comments about her in front of colleagues in the workplace.
In February 2020, political journalist Laura Bassett alleged that, before appearing on his program in October 2016, to comment on sexual assault allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump, Matthews made inappropriate remarks about Bassett’s television studio makeup. Those remarks included, clothing, and dating life, and asked her, “Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?” Bassett claims that when she laughed nervously and said nothing, Matthews followed up to the makeup artist with: “Keep putting makeup on her, I’ll fall in love with her.” In 2017, Bassett had previously published a personal essay about the incident and was afraid to name Matthews at the time for fear of retaliation from MSNBC.
On February 22, 2020, commenting on the 2020 Nevada Democratic caucuses, Matthews invoked “the fall of France” to the Nazis in 1940 as a metaphor for Bernie Sanders’s victory in the state. As the Nazis killed members of Sanders’s family during the Holocaust, his comparison was viewed as insensitive and prompted widespread adverse reactions on Twitter, calling to have him removed from MSNBC.
The call came after Matthews’similar inflammatory remarks that “f Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War. He said, there would have been executions in Central Park.” ith mounting criticism of his Nazi analogy, on his Monday, February 24 show, Matthews issued an unusual on-air apology to Senator Sanders and his supporters. Matthews has not apologized for his execution remark.
