Bill Maher defended Chris Matthews after the former MSNBC anchor recently announced his resignation following a litany of accusations against him.
Matthews, 74, announced his retirement on his show Hardball this week, explaining that his retirement wasn’t the result of “a lack of interest in politics” before apologizing for comments he made about “a woman’s appearance.”
On his show Friday night, Maher called Matthews “a friend” and added, “I will miss him and a lot of other people” will as well. He went on to say, “This cancel culture is a cancer on progressivism.”
He went through a list of controversial comments the former Hardball anchor made in recent weeks and mocked the outrage. In response to the backlash Matthews received for comparing Sen. Bernie Sanders’s victory in the Nevada primary to the Nazi invasion of France, for which he later apologized, Maher said, “Obviously, he’s a Nazi, but he apologized for that, so I hope the victims got some closure.”
Maher also noted that Matthews mixed up Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Democratic opponent Jaime Harrison and the South Carolina Republican’s colleague Sen. Tim Scott, both of whom are black. Maher sarcastically called Matthews a “Klansman” for that mistake.
Maher then pivoted to the allegations of sexual harassment launched by Laura Bassett, a columnist with GQ, who claimed in an opinion piece that the television host made comments about her appearance.
He acknowledged the remarks could be considered “kind of creepy,” but explained, “Guys are married for a million years, they want to flirt for two seconds.” Maher also mocked Bassett’s allegations, sarcastically saying, “Thank you, Rosa Parks,” and later adding, “Is she a compliment victim or a compliment survivor?”
