As my colleague Rusty Weiss reported on Monday, "Morning Joe" hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough told all of their viewer that they had bitten the bullet and went to meet with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Why?
According to them, it was to find some common ground after years and years of division:
Brzezinski would add that Trump seemed "interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues."
Still, they knew that glimmer of hope would not be enough for viewers, and Mika felt compelled to justify their actions to their audience.
"And for those asking why we would go speak to the President-elect during such fraught times - especially between us - I guess I would ask back, 'Why wouldn't we?'" she wondered.
"Five years of political warfare has deeply divided Washington and the country. We have been as clear as we know how in expressing our deep concerns about President Trump's actions and words in the coarsening of public debate."
That's putting it lightly.
This dynamic duo have, like many of their peers, been referring to Trump and his supporters as the epitome of evil for the better part of a decade. You and Trump have been compared to Nazis so many times you've likely forgotten more times than you can remember. The "Morning Joe" crew is one of those places the accusations sailed in from.
Morning Joe Host @morningmika defended her and Joe's decision to visit Mar-a-Lago and kiss the ring of President-Elect Trump. But, we have archived footage - Roll The Tape!
— Headline USA (@HeadlineUSA) November 18, 2024
SCARBOROUGH [Before Election]: "I can go back and talk about Nazi Germany, and I do it without any… pic.twitter.com/pPC0j3s5ID
But if Trump was the height of all that was wrong in this world, a Nazi, an international terrorist, and the man who will bring about the destruction of the Western World, why would the Scarborough's be flying to his house to kiss his ring?
Easy. They were defeated. Not by Trump, mind you.
By capitalism.
MSNBC isn't doing so hot. Since the election, its viewership has dropped dramatically. According to Fox News, it hasn't seen viewership this low since 2016:
MSNBC averaged only 599,000 total viewers on Wednesday, November 13, for its smallest Wednesday audience since June 29, 2016. By comparison, Fox News Channel averaged 2.3 million total viewers on Wednesday this week.
MSNBC averaged 991,000 total viewers on weekdays during 2024, so the network shed 40% of its usual audience on Wednesday this week.
During the primetime hours of 8-11 p.m. ET, MSNBC’s primetime line-up of "All In with Chris Hayes," "Alex Wagner Tonight" and "The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell" drew only 929,000 total viewers on Wednesday this week for a 43% drop from its 2024 average of 1.6 million.
MSNBC isn't the only network feeling the hurt in a post Trump-win era. As I reported last week, all of corporate media seems to be feeling the need to repair relations with Trump supporters, or in this case, half of America. It knows that, with such a huge popular win, continuing to attack Trump is likely going to drive away too much viewership, and as such, things need to be changed in a big way.
The View is reportedly looking for pro-Trump cohosts, and the L.A. Times is looking to add conservative voices as well. All around you, corporate America seems to be experience a rabid search for some sort of middle ground after furiously leaning left for years and years.
And it's not because they're any less left. Many of these people believe everything they said. These producers and executives hate the right, and they hate Trump, but they love money way more than they hate anything, and the best way to get money is to be friendly with Trump and his supporters.
The 2024 election sent a very loud and clear message; the culture has changed. The old fearmongering isn't working anymore. Nobody wants to hear about your panic-inducing predictions, no one believes he's going to make it all come crashing down, and the media's reputation is so ruined that it's left many unable to figure out what the point of them is anymore.
That's money walking out the door. That's ad dollars burning in a pile right in front of them.
So, with all the principles of a stripper, they begin dancing to a different tune. With friendlier voices that no longer grate on people's ears, and a bit of trust won back, maybe the money will begin raining again.
But will it?
Probably not, or at least not in a large way.
As I wrote previously, the corporate media suffered from two big problems. The first was its insane partisan bias, but the other was its slow, lumbering, corporate process. The number one place for news in the world is X, a social media platform where news is delivered immediately. You log on, see the post, and you're informed. You can even discuss it or see it be discussed live with others who are more in the know than you. Expert, or at least informed opinion, is literally right there with the post.
With the corporate world, the news is received, the segment is written, the guests are booked, and then at the allotted time, the news is given. By that time, that particular piece of news could be well out-of-date, and the opinion of the expert they booked already given by someone else.
But that's capitalism, baby. It's true progress.
If these networks follow through with their pro-conservative inclusions, then I see them getting a slight boost in popularity and viewership, but I don't see them turning the entire ship around. There's no going back to the way things were.
We've moved on.
