Chris Matthews surprises everyone by announcing, on air, that he is retiring from MSNBC

Chris Matthews opened Monday night’s show with a surprise announcement, saying, “Let me start with my headline tonight. I’m retiring. This is the last Hardball on MSNBC.” Matthews went on to thank the audience and talk warmly about his career: “Every morning I read the papers, and I'm gung ho to get to work. Not many people have had this privilege.”

He also touched on recent allegations of his inappropriate behavior in the workplace, something he handled gracefully by saying it was, in part, the reason he was retiring. Times have changed, and changed for the better, he said.

MATHEWS: The younger generations out there are ready to take the reigns. We see them in politics, in the media, and fighting for their causes. They are improving the workplace. We are talking about better standards than we grew up with. Fair standards. A lot of it has to do with how we talk to each other. Compliments on a woman's appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were okay, were never okay. Not then, and certainly not today, and for making such comments in the past, I'm sorry.

He finished by saying he hoped he would be missed, as he would miss the audience. Matthews had also come under fire recently for bizarre rants against Bernie Sanders’ campaign, making analogies to authoritarianism and Nazi Germany—something Matthews apologized on-air for.