MSNBC's Chris Matthews suggested on his show Monday evening that radio hosts Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh are not real news sources, citing the wiretap allegations President Donald Trump levied against former President Barack Obama.
The show started with Matthews playing a clip of Levin.
"We have a prior administration, Barack Obama and his surrogates, who were supporting Hillary Clinton and their party, the Democrat party, who were using the instrumentalities of the federal government, intelligence activities, to surveil members of the Trump campaign," Levin said.
Matthews then made a comment about Levin's voice.
"Well, that's a voice to be believed," Matthews said.
He implied that because Limbaugh and Levin, both conservative radio hosts, are not similar to organizations such as the New York Times, they are not legitimate.
"I'll be using nice American words like fudge," Matthews said. "The notion that Mark Levin is a news outlet or that Rush Limbaugh is a news outlet–and that's their way of disgracing the legitimate media by saying that those are just other news outlets."
"It's just not the New York Times; it's not the Washington Post; it's not the Wall Street Journal; it's not the Los Angeles Times; it's not a major news network," he continued.
The MSNBC host said that people like Levin, talk radio show hosts, "rile people up with outrageous charges."
"It's Mark Levin, a guy who–I know what talk radio guys do," he said. "On left and right. Mostly on right, they rile them–rile people up with outrageous charges and nobody keeps count of them. Alex Jones. Nobody keeps count."
Matthews then took a swing at Trump.
"But, here's the president of the United States getting his information from these people," he said.
Levin responded to Matthews' comments on Tuesday afternoon by calling the MSNBC host "dumb as a rock" via Twitter, noting that he quoted the New York Times while reporting on Trump's wiretap allegations.
Chris Matthews, dumb as a rock. NY Times? I quoted from the NY Times, moron. https://t.co/hl3HhApPFZ
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) March 7, 2017
UPDATE 4:25 P.M.: This post was updated to include Mark Levin's response to Chris Matthews' comments.