Jim Cramer Comes Out of Hiding, Responds to Getting Trounced By Jon Stewart

Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress at 7:32 AM on March 19, 2009.

This morning, CNBC host Jim Cramer went on NBC’s Today Show and made some of his first public comments about his brutal face-off with the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart. (The morning after the evisceration, Cramer unexpectedly skipped a planned appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.) Today, Cramer dismissed Stewart’s attacks, calling them “naive” and saying that CNBC had been "out front" in identifying financial malfeasance:

I think it was a naive and misleading thing to attack the media. We weren’t behind this. CNBC, in particular, has been out front on this. … I think there are people who bear so much more responsibility [than the media] that it’s just wrong-headed: the politicians, the regulators, the SEC, the lenders, the investment banks. … It’s just a naive focus, it really is Meredith.

Watch it:

This full-throated defense of the network may be coming in response to CNBC staffers who were reportedly “furious” with Cramer for not defending their reporting in his interview with Stewart.

Tagged as: daily show, jon stewart, cnbc, economic crisis, jim cramer

Amanda Terkel is Deputy Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves as Deputy Editor for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.