The View Takes Awkward Turn as Joy Behar Begrudgingly Accepts Chris Matthews’ Denial of Sexism Towards Hillary Clinton

The View took a bit of an awkward turn on Wednesday, as Joy Behar pressed Chris Matthews on alleged “sexist comments about Hillary Clinton,” before begrudgingly accepting his denial.

Sunny Hostin first questioned Matthews on his retirement from MSNBC’s Hardball last year, noting that Lauren Bassett claimed he “inappropriately flirted” with her before she appeared as a guest on his show.  and made her feel uncomfortable before her appearance on Hardball.

“Was it your decision to leave and what were the lessons learned in retrospect?” Hostin asked.

“The lesson is you’re not supposed to comment about a person’s appearance in the workplace, certainly, and I know that rule by heart, certainly now. I had made a couple of comments what we might have called in the old days compliments, but are not taken as compliments today by any means,” Matthews responded.

“I owned up to it. I took ownership of it. I never challenged it, I never said it was he said/she said. The reporting by Lauren Bassett was correct. It was factual. It was great reporting, you might argue. I just said it all was true, and I retired. And that was the decision I made, and I may have faced some sort of disciplining by the network, but I’m telling you, I sat in that room and told the president of the network I’m leaving.”

Behar told the former anchor that she believed him and appreciated his mea culpa, later pressing him on “a lot of sexist comments” he allegedly made regarding Clinton.

“You called her, ‘She-devil, witchy, Nurse Ratched,” said Behar.

“No, I didn’t, actually. I never did,” Matthews responded.

Behar first questioned his denial, prompting Matthews to request she “look it up.

“Well, I think what you heard was — you know what a tease is on the show? You do it on this show as well. There was a tease by a producer, which was not saying this, no, it was setting up what the Republicans were going to do to her in that campaign,” said Matthews. “It was a set up to a whole segment on the program about how the Republicans were not going to run against her on the issues. they’re going to go after her personally – in that kind of attack.”

He stressed that the phrase was taken out of context, adding, “I never said that about her.”

“Uh huh, all right. Okay, so um,” Behar said. “How about this question, because it was reported that you said those things, so it’s my bad —  I think.”

Behar then yielded to Sara Haines, adding that she “has a question, for some reason.”

Haines asked Matthews about his past job as a Capitol police officer, asking what it was like to witness the Jan. 6 insurrection and how he has reacted to Republican attempts t0 “sweep it under the rug.”

“Well, that’s absurd. That’s historically awful. I tell you, I was a cop up there for several months. I was appointed by a senator under the old patriot system, but I felt for that building. It’s a sacred place to me. That’s the center of our democracy,” he said. It’s really the citadel of what we believe in. We elect our leaders. They’re accountable to us, and that’s the place where they pass the laws and the laws for us if we agree with them. And we try to improve our country all the time in that building. That’s where we try to make a better union for our country. It’s a sacred place. It’s a cathedral of democracy.”

Matthews added that he was glad to see Americans seeing “the full picture” of the Capitol police, who “courageously defended the building.”

“That one African-American cop, the police officer who had to lead the bad guys away so he could save the political people from being attacked and being found. I mean, these people put their lives on the line, and some of them lost their lives,” he added.

“So, it was a sense of violation and I was proud that the cops who were there did their jobs, were willing to risk their lives to do so. And maybe a lot of them voted for [Donald] Trump. I don’t know. They’re country guys, working guys. I’m sure they had the usual distribution of votes on both sides. But that they did their job, I’m so proud of that.”

Watch above, via ABC.