“I just read [Cuomo’s comment] as somebody who wanted to defend that fact that nobody in broadcast television wanted to hire him, I guess, or he couldn’t get the job that he wanted,” Todd told WABC radio in New York. “I don’t know what it was, but he was awfully defensive so he took shots at other people.”

Cuomo made the unflattering comparison of Todd and CNN’s Tapper in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published earlier this week.

“Anderson Cooper is a hell of a lot bigger than any male anywhere on network television,” Cuomo said in an interview published Wednesday. “I would argue that Chuck Todd ain’t Jake Tapper. Jake Tapper has a much bigger footprint in politics than Chuck Todd does.”