GQ Magazine political columnist Laura Bassett named Matthews as the cable news host that she referenced in a 2017 personal essay
A journalist who condemned MSNBC’s Chris Matthews interview with Elizabeth Warren earlier in the week has shared that the controversial host was ‘gross and inappropriate’ with her.
GQ Magazine political columnist Laura Bassett named Matthews as the cable news host that she referenced in a 2017 personal essay for Huffington Post.
‘In 2017, I wrote about a cable news host being gross and inappropriate with me,’ Bassett said in a Twitter post. ‘I was afraid to name him at the time. I’m not anymore; it was Chris Matthews! And his sexist exchange with Warren this week inspired me to revisit those moments and name him.’
Basset’s fury comes on the heel of a tense exchange between the Hardball host and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren over comments she made regarding allegations against Michael Bloomberg.
During the back and forth, Matthews repeatedly asked Warren why Bloomberg would lie about pregnancy discrimination to which the Massachusetts senator retorted: ‘Why would she lie?’
Basset’s fury comes on the heel of a tense exchange between the Hardball host and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren over comments she made regarding allegations against Michael Bloomberg
‘There was no reason for him to harp on its veracity, except, perhaps, that he himself has made so many sexist comments over the years that he has a vested interest in Bloomberg being let off the hook,’ Bassett added in her GQ piece, shared on Friday.
Speaking of her own experiences with Matthews, Bassett shared that ‘a much older, married cable-news host’ inappropriately flirted with her in a makeup room before going on his show on numerous occasions.
‘I was afraid to name him at the time for fear of retaliation from the network; I’m not anymore,’ she added, declaring that Chris Matthews was the host in question.
Bassett claimed that Matthews made her ‘noticeably uncomfortable’ while on air, asking her ahead of a segment, ‘Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?’
Bassetts notes that besides pundits, Matthews has ‘tendency to objectify women’ who are also in the political space (pictured in June 2019)
Bassett nervously laughed, which prompted Matthews to turn to the makeup artist and state: ‘Keep putting makeup on her, I’ll fall in love with her.’
On another occasion, the columnist claims that Matthews saw her in a red dress and asked if she was going out that night.
She says that said that she ‘didn’t know,’ to which Matthews told the 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.’
Bassett claimed that Matthews made her ‘noticeably uncomfortable’ while on air, asking her ahead of a segment, ‘Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?’
‘Again—Matthews was never my boss. I’m pretty sure that behavior doesn’t rise to the level of illegal sexual harassment,’ she said. ‘But it undermined my ability to do my job well. And after I published a story about it, even though I didn’t name him, dozens of people reached out to say they knew exactly who it was. Many had similar stories.’
Bassetts began her onslaught by highlighting the ‘well-documented’ allegations against the host, noting that Matthews has a tendency to make comments about women in demeaning ways.
She specifically references comments Matthews made to Erin Burnett where he allegedly told her on air: ‘You’re a knockout… it’s all right getting bad news from you.’
The columnist also highlights a 2017 Daily Caller article where one of the host’s former producers said that he rated female guest on a numerical scale, naming them the ‘hottest of the week’ like a ‘teenage boy.’
And in 1999, an assistant producer accused Matthews of sexual harassment. CNBC investigated the incident and determined that comments Matthews made were ‘inappropriate’, leading to him getting a ‘stern reprimand,’ according to an MSNBC spokesperson.
Bassetts notes that besides pundits, Matthews has ‘tendency to objectify women’ who are also in the political space.
On another occasion, the columnist claims that Matthews saw her in a red dress and asked if she was going out that night
She notes that women in politics are split in two categories when it comes to Matthews; those he lusts over and those he holds contempt for as they make it closer to the presidency.
Bassetts considers comments he made about Sarah Palin in 2011 and Sally Yates in 2017 as showing how he’ll often note how attractive a woman is.
The journalist also claimed that a plethora of remarks that Matthews has made about Hillary Clinton showed that he has ‘repeatedly challenged whether women are legitimate politicians or could be president at all.’
‘In fact, Matthews’s whole modus operandi seems to be inviting smart women onto his show, flirting with them or otherwise making them uncomfortable before or while the camera rolls, asking them a question on air and then immediately interrupting them to tell them why they’re wrong,’ Bassett asserts.
Bassett continues lambasting Matthews, stating that he could have asked Warren important follow up questions about the role NDAs play in abusive power structures
‘He repeated this playbook with Warren this week. The fact that this kind of behavior has not lost him his primetime cable-news show in the year 2020—even aside from his egregious ‘Bill Cosby pill’ joke and the sexual-harassment allegation against him—speaks to how far the #MeToo movement still has to go to change the standards for what kind of attitudes toward women in the workplace are acceptable and even rewarded.’
Bassett continues lambasting Matthews, stating that he could have asked important follow up questions about the role NDAs play in abusive power structures.
She continued: ‘Instead of exploring that, Matthews attacked Warren’s clarity on whether she believes another woman’s corroborated testimony. He seems constitutionally incapable of probing these hyper-relevant topics with anything approaching intellectual curiosity or open-mindedness. In that way, he’s also unfit for his job.’
Bassett slammed MSNBC for continuing to employ Matthews and have him doing a major cable-news evening show with his clear ‘flagrant bias.’
‘His position affords him the ability to affect public opinion, both sweeping away documented behavior of male presidential candidates and casting doubt on corroborated women’s accusations against those men,’ she said. ‘Having a news anchor who calls women ‘she-devil’ and treats their assessments with infantilizing suspicion while conducting post-debate interviews builds in a major disadvantage for female candidates. And that’s downright irresponsible.’