MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle confronted Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) during an interview on Friday morning about his tweet accusing the media of being delighted about the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S.

Ruhle read aloud the first half of the tweet, in which Rubio claimed that “some in our media can’t contain their glee and delight in reporting that the U.S. has more #CoronaVirus cases than #China” and that they were engaging in “grotesque” and “bad” journalism.

“I need to ask you this because I’m a journalist,” the anchor said. “We’re not just some personalities. You called out journalism. And I need to understand why on Earth you did this.”

Rubio defended the tweet, claiming that there were “some journalists that were doing exactly what I said.”

Ruhle pointed out that despite the GOP senator’s argument that the time needed to deal with the coronavirus shouldn’t be wasted on pointing fingers, “that’s exactly what you did in that tweet.”