MSNBC
After Election P
in Turmoil
resident Donald Trump’s victory dealt a flurry of gut punches to left- leaning MSNBC, including plummeting ratings, a major talent shakeup, and a Federal Communications Commission investigation. In February, Trump adversary
Joy Reid saw her show The ReidOut canceled as part of a network overhaul led by new President Rebecca Kutler. Reid, one of the most prominent
Trump critics in the mainstream media, has been a fixture at the network since 2011, hosting the weekend talk show AM Joy since 2016. Other casualties included Alex Wagner, who previously hosted the 9 p.m. slot four nights a week and was replaced by Joe Biden’s former press secretary Jen Psaki. The Katie Phang Show and José Díaz-Balart Reports were also canceled. Following Trump’s reelection, the
network endured a brutal drop in ratings. MSNBC’s prime-time audience plunged by 53%. Additionally, many viewers were outraged when MSNBC’s prominent hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski compromised their anti- Trump stance by visiting Mar-a-Lago to meet Trump. Comcast’s announcement
of its intention to spin off the underperforming network raised further questions about its viability, which was compounded by the revelation that it was under investigation for potentially illegal DEI practices. Trump ridiculed the network’s
challenges in a post on Truth Social dated Feb. 24, celebrating the high- profile firings and encouraging the network to continue its eff orts to clean house. “Lowlife Chairman of ‘Concast’
Brian Roberts, the owner of Ratings Challenged NBC and MSDNC, has finally gotten the nerve up to fire one of the least talented people in television, the mentally obnoxious racist, Joy Reid,” Trump wrote.
60 NEWSMAX | MAY 2025
WHIPLASH Progressives like MSNBC’s Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were left reeling by President Donald Trump’s reelection, and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos wrote to staff warning they were losing credibility with their readers.
mentator was instrumental, particularly among young men, in helping Trump get reelected last year. With 14.5 million Spotify
followers and 17.5 million YouTube subscribers, The Joe Rogan Experience crushes most traditional media in au- dience size. His three-hour interview
with Trump in October gar- nered 40 million views on YouTube alone and surpassed the Harris-Trump debate as the
election’s most-watched event. In contrast, Harris’ Fox News interview with Bret Baier at- tracted 8 million live viewers and 6.5 million on YouTube. Like Musk, Rogan attri-
butes his popularity in part to a cultural shift toward indepen- dence and away from central- ized information control. “The news isn’t even the
news anymore. X is the news. That’s where people are fi nd- ing out what’s really happening
Continued on page 62
SCARBOROUGH/NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
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