Cramer responds to Stewart: ‘It was naive and misleading’ to attack me.

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.