Longtime MSNBC host Chris Matthews abruptly announced his retirement on-air Monday night, coming on the heels of a string of high-profile missteps during election coverage and amid new allegations of inappropriate comments toward women. “Let me start with my headline tonight. I’m retiring,” Matthews told viewers at the top of Monday’s episode of Hardball. “This is the last Hardball on MSNBC.”
Matthews, one of the network’s most visible hosts for the past two decades, told viewers that his decision to step down “obviously … isn’t for lack of interest in politics,” an understatement given 14 states are voting on Tuesday in the Democratic primary. “As you can tell I’ve loved every minute of my 20 years as host of Hardball,” he said. “Every morning I read the papers and I’m gung ho to get to work.” The 74-year-old host, who recently landed in hot water with the younger-skewing progressive left, claimed that his decision to leave was in order to pass the torch to the younger generation. “After the conversation I’ve had with MSNBC, I decided tonight will be my last Hardball, so let me tell you why,” Matthews said. “The younger generations out there are ready to take the reins. We see them in politics, and the media and fighting for their causes. They are improving the workplace, we’re talking here about better standards than we grew up with, fair standards.”
The MSNBC anchor’s sudden departure—which was effective immediately, with a visibly stunned Steve Kornacki stepping in to finish the rest of Monday’s Hardball—comes amid a firestorm of criticism against Matthews. In recent days, the Hardball host had drawn criticism for such comments as likening Senator Bernie Sanders’s Nevada win to the Nazis invading France and mistaking Senator Tim Scott for Jaime Harrison, who’s challenging Sen. Lindsey Graham for his seat in November. Matthews later apologized for his Sanders analogy, telling the senator in an on-air address, “I’m sorry for comparing anything from that tragic era in which so many suffered, especially the Jewish people, to an electoral result of which you were the well-deserved winner.” “In the days and weeks and months ahead, I will strive to do a better job myself of elevating the political discussion,” Matthews added.
Matthews’ long history of inappropriate comments toward women also resurfaced after the anchor challenged Sen. Elizabeth Warren for calling out Mike Bloomberg on the debate stage over allegedly telling a pregnant female employee to “Kill it.” “Why would he lie?” Matthews asked Warren about Bloomberg. (Bloomberg has denied making the alleged remarks, which have been corroborated by a third party.)
Journalist Laura Bassett subsequently called out Matthews for his “objectifying and belittling comments” toward women—including Bassett herself—in a piece for GQ, in which she called Matthews’s continued presence on MSNBC “downright irresponsible.” “The open secret of Matthews’s everyday behavior off camera with guests … often creeps up to the line of sexual harassment without actually crossing it, so that women can never feel that it’s worth jeopardizing their own careers to complain,” Bassett wrote. “Many women in politics or media who have interacted with the bombastic host have some kind of story about him making them feel uncomfortable on the job. I have my own.” (In tweets posted after Matthews announced his retirement, Bassett commented, “it’s about time,” and added that the harassment she’s received as the result of her piece is “all worth it if he will never have the platform to demean and objectify us again.”) Matthews suggested Monday that his behavior toward women had been a contributing factor in his departure, saying that the “better standards” in the workplace he referred to largely “has to do with how we talk to each other.” “Compliments on a woman’s appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were okay—were never ok,” Matthews said. “Not then and certainly not today, and for making such comments in the past, I’m sorry.”