NBC’s Chuck Todd fired back at Chris Cuomo on Friday after the CNN anchor unfavorably compared him to Jake Tapper, saying “nobody in broadcast television wanted to hire” Cuomo.

“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.

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“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.”

Todd hosts NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while Tapper hosts CNN’s Sunday public affairs program, “State of the Union.”

Todd’s Sunday broadcast program is seen by 3.7 million people on average, while Tapper's cable program attracts an average of less than 1 million total viewers, according to an analysis by Mediaite on Apr. 10.

CNN declined to comment.