- Freelance political reporter Laura Bassett accused MSNBC's Chris Matthews of making suggestive comments and inappropriately flirting with her at least twice before she went on his show.
- On one occasion, Bassett wrote in GQ Magazine, Matthews turned to her while they were in the makeup room and asked, "Why haven't I fallen in love with you yet?"
- Bassett wrote that when she went on camera with him a few minutes later, she stumbled over her words and forgot "basic vocabulary" because she was so uncomfortable with what had transpired.
- On another occasion, Bassett alleges that Matthews was "bolder" and stood between her and a mirror and asked her if she was going out that night.
- "Make sure you wipe this off her face after the show," he allegedly told the makeup artist. "We don't make her up so some guy at a bar can look at her like this."
- Bassett first detailed the encounters in 2017 but didn't identify Matthews by name out of fear of retaliation.
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Laura Bassett, a freelance journalist who covers politics, gender, and culture, accused the MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews of making suggestive comments to her at least twice in 2016 when she was a guest on his show.
Bassett first wrote about her encounters with Matthews, the host of MSNBC's "Hardball," in October 2017 but she didn't identify him by name.
But on Friday, Bassett published another essay in GQ naming Matthews in the wake of his interview with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren earlier this week, during which Matthews cast doubt on Warren's allegation that former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg engaged in pregnancy discrimination against his employees.
According to Bassett, Matthews "inappropriately flirted" with her in the makeup room a few times before they went live on his show, which made her "noticeably uncomfortable" on the air. The first time it happened, she wrote, they were about to go on camera to discuss multiple allegations of sexual assault against President Donald Trump.
Bassett wrote that at the time, in 2016, Matthews was sitting in a chair next to her in the makeup room, looked over at her and asked, "Why haven't I fallen in love with you yet?"
When the freelance reporter first published her account of the encounter with Matthews in HuffPost in 2017, she went into more detail.
"I froze," she wrote, referring to her reaction to Matthews' question. "He was older, married, far more powerful than I was in media. He could decide whether or not I got booked on the network again. I'd been warned by more than one person that he sometimes tried to humiliate his female guests on the air."
"So I laughed uncomfortably and said nothing," she wrote.
Matthews then followed up and told the makeup artist: "Keep putting makeup on her, I'll fall in love with her."
"My stomach lurched," Bassett wrote in HuffPost. "The makeup lady apologized for him after he left. 'Don't let him bother you,' she said. 'That's just how he is.'"
The reporter wrote that Matthews' comments made her so uncomfortable that she "stumbled" over her answers when she was on camera with him a few minutes later and "forgot basic vocabulary words."
Then, a few weeks later, when Bassett joined "Hardball" again, she alleges that Matthews was "a bit bolder" and stood between her and the mirror in the makeup room and complimented the red dress she wore for the segment.
"You going out tonight?" he asked her.
Bassett replied that she didn't know, and Matthews again turned to the makeup artist and said, "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."
