Chris Matthews: High profile hosts come out in support of disgraced commentator after sexual harassment allegations

Mike Brzezinski, Meghan McCain and columnist Kathleen Parker spoke in defence of Mr Matthews

Some women in media who know or have worked with the now-former host of MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews, have come to his defence since his abrupt retirement from the network over sexual harassment allegations.

Mr Matthews resigned on air Monday night. He opened the show, announced his retirement, and when the show went to commercial and returned, Mr Matthews was no longer behind the desk.

“I’m retiring. This is the last ‘Hardball’ on MSNBC, and obviously this isn’t for lack of interest in politics. As you can tell, I’ve loved every minute of my 20 years as host of ‘Hardball.’ Every morning, I read the papers and I’m gung-ho to get to work. Not many have had this privilege,” he said before signing off.

On ‘Morning Joe,’ host Mika Brzezinski shared her thoughts on her long-time colleague’s exit from the network.

“I’m sad. Chris’s passion and joy was infectious,” she said. “As a woman, I loved working with Chris Matthews. I really enjoyed being his colleague.”

She said that while she still remains friends with Mr Matthews, she also understands the importance of “cancel culture” and noted that changes could be painful in the pursuit of a more just world.

On ‘The View,’ Meghan McCain made the argument that Mr Matthews deserved a better exit.

“To reduce his entire career to this segment is really sad, because I thought he deserved a better sendoff than that. I thought I might be raked over the coal for saying that today,” she said. “That doesn’t mean his behaviour should be absolved, it doesn’t mean that he should not apologise and his feet not be held to the fire, but a lot of people at MSNBC have done a lot of crap.”

Mr Matthews has been a perpetual source of criticism for MSNBC over recent weeks, mostly tied to his coverage of Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign, at times suggesting that Mr Sanders might support people that would have ‘executed him’ in Central Park and later using a historical analogy about Mr Sanders’ success in Nevada that compared it to the victory of the Nazis over France in World War II.

It appears the last straw for MSNBC was an op-ed by journalist Laura Bassett published in GQ last Friday in which she says Mr Matthews said he’d “fall in love with her” while they were in makeup before an episode of ‘Hardball.’

Ms Bassett said that though she had once written about the experience, she chose not to reveal Mr Matthews name in the account. She said her decision to run a new piece naming Mr Matthews was inspired by his treatment of Senator Elizabeth Warren following the South Carolina debate.

Following the debate, Mr Matthews pushed Ms Warren on her decision to believe the account of a woman who worked for former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg that the candidate told her to “kill it” when she alerted him to her pregnancy. Ms Bassett said the anchor's behavior towards Ms Warren prompted her to publish the article outlining his “long history of sexist comments and behavior.”

On Twitter, Kathleen Parker, a Washington Post columnist, also came to Mr Matthews’ defence.

“Chris Matthews is a friend of mine. He and I have flirted unabashedly for 20 years. This is an atrocious end to a noble, happy-warrior career. I will continue to be his friend,” she wrote in a tweet.

Ms Parker’s characterising of Mr Matthews’ statements towards women - which he reduced to “compliments on a woman’s appearance” - as flirting prompted backlash on social media, some of which came from other women in the cable news realm.

“The friends’ ‘He never did it to ME’ vouch-for is meaningless, since the friend wasn’t always there, AND it discredits alleged victims. This one also manages to dismiss harassment as mere flirting, an idea that, like Matthews, has rightly been retired,” S.E. Cupp, host of S.E. Cupp Unfiltered on CNN, tweeted.