Matt Taibbi Rips MSNBC Host Over Fake Russian Stories

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi sparred with MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan on Thursday over the Twitter Files and Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The Daily Caller reports Hasan questioned Taibbi’s recent appearance before Congress, where he refused to reveal his sources despite Democratic Texas Rep. Sylvia Garcia repeatedly demanding answers.

Hasan played a clip from Taibbi’s 2021 appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience where he said that as a journalist, once you start getting handed stories, it’s a bad line to have crossed.

“The hilarity of this coming from MSNBC which did nothing but vomit up fake Russian hit stories that came straight from the FBI for six consecutive years, you guys still haven’t apologized for it.”

“I wasn’t there in that period so I’ve got nothing to apologize for,” Hasan said. “I’m asking you your words, did you cross a line? It’s a very simple question, you can ‘what about’ and deflect, it’s a simple question, we played a clip for you, I’m giving you a chance to answer. Did you cross the line, your words?”

“No I did not,” Taibbi said. “The stories are self-contained stories that hold up in themselves and what I was talking about in the Joe Rogan story, I was quoting a passage from Seymour Hirsch’s book ‘Reporter’ when he was talking about when he was given a story by the CIA about an Israeli spy that they had caught and he was saying something to the effect of I who had always gotten the material, was being handed the material. So yeah, look, it sounds bad, but this stuff is clearly in the public interest, it’s real, it’s true and I’m doing the best I can to report it.”