Rachel Maddow ripped Karl Rove for disputing President Obama's victory on Fox News on Tuesday night.
Fox News had called the election for Obama when Rove, a Fox News contributor, began to argue with the network about the announcement. Rove said it was "premature" and "early" to make any real decisions, prompting some awkward reactions from anchors Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly and plain disbelief from observers.
Over at MSNBC, Maddow took stock of the situation. “I don’t mean to cross-advertise here, but on the conservative cable news network Fox News Channel – Fox News Channel called Ohio for Obama, but the on-air talent at Fox News Channel is refusing to concede that they believe it," she said.
“Can you define that word ‘talent’ for the people who are not in this industry,” fellow MSNBC host Chris Matthews said. “They happen to have positions. It doesn’t say anything about their quality.”
“People who are wearing makeup and have cameras pointed at them,” Maddow said. "It's not everybody who's on Fox News tonight, but some of the people who Fox is putting on tonight are refusing to believe their own network’s call in the state of Ohio."
She said it was Rove who “is now trying to get on air the Fox News Channel to rescind its call in Ohio in favor of the candidate that he has bankrolled to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. This is a remarkable thing.”
Later, Maddow launched into a broader commentary on what she saw as the trend of "the right questioning what used to be agreed upon data." She alleged that conservatives have turned to refuting any and all hard facts that do not support their ideas — an argument that the MSNBC host has made before.
“It’s worth looking at close races and I do not begrudge the Romney campaign for saying that they’ve got issues with what’s gone on with Ohio,” Maddow said. “But to decide that a result isn’t a result as long as you don’t like the outcome is something that means that we cannot work together as a country anymore. And we can’t go down this road very much further.”