Rachel Maddow explains how Alex Acosta made the case against himself even worse

Some political commentators are saying that Labor Secretary Alex Acosta saved himself during his Wednesday press conference, simply because he refused to accept responsibility for his actions and ascribed blame to everyone else. But MSNBC host Rachel Maddow thinks that Acosta made things worse for himself today.

She called today a "gross day" in the news. One that made her want to have a shower in her office so that she didn't quite feel so disgusting after watching the reports from today.

"This was clearly him showing he is willing to face criticism on this. Face his critics," Maddow said Wednesday. "Alex Acosta’s defense started to boomerang on him. This I did not expect. In a bunch of different ways, what Secretary Acosta did today and in particular the information he released to the press today seemed to have made things worse for him in terms of efforts to justify his previous actions and justify why he shouldn’t be apologizing now at least if not resigning over his role in this scandal now that Jeffrey Epstein is facing federal charges -- since Acosta couldn’t bring himself to bring similar charges when he had Epstein in his clutches years ago."

She explained that federal judge has now ruled that Acosta broke the law when he made his non-prosecution deal with Epstein without telling the victims about it. Acosta will face a sanction in federal court for doing so. It's unclear if it's something that he would get disbarred for, however.

"As a legal matter and as a political matter in terms of the future of the cabinet official, it does seem to me like this cabinet official, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, made the case against himself worse today with this defense he rolled out, which is immediately contested by the person who the defense pointed at," Maddow closed.

Watch her take below: