The fallout at MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” continued to worsen this week after co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski told viewers on Monday that they met in person with President-elect Donald Trump.
Viewership fell to a new low Wednesday — just two days after the MSNBC duo said they trekked to the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. to “restart communications” with Trump after years of being highly critical of him, stunning their left-leaning audience.
According to Nielsen data, the MSNBC duo delivered their lowest-rated program since 2021 in the advertiser-coveted 25 to 54-year old demographic, cratering 41% on the demo and 16% in total viewers since the hosts announced their meeting.
Scarborough and Brzezinski have come under fire from both liberals and conservatives this week who accused them of hypocrisy for routinely denouncing Trump, only to then seek his company after he was elected.
“The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart mocked the duo for rushing to meet at with Trump in Florida after the pair parroted Democrats who called him a danger to democracy and compared him to Hitler.
Nikki Haley, the former Republican presidential candidate, blasted the “Morning Joe” co-hosts on Monday — accusing them of currying favor with Trump to boost their ratings.
The show’s audience peeled off almost immediately after the husband-wife team broke news of their trip on Monday.
Nielsen data also showed that less than an hour after the hosts gave their rationale for the trip, viewers were changing the channel and clicking away from MSNBC.
Between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. Eastern time, viewership of “Morning Joe” fell 17% — from 839,000 to 694,000. Viewership dropped 38% in the demo from 113,000 people to 70,000.
Meanwhile in the 8 a.m.-to-9 a.m. hour, the audience picked up somewhat as viewership hit 775,000 people, but ratings dropped in the 9 a.m.-to-10 a.m. hour as the audience shrank to 770,000 viewers.
But the steady viewership declines of the weekday 6 am to 9 am show also follows a bigger trend at the liberal network.
MSNBC has seen its ratings nosedive in the days after Trump’s election victory two weeks earlier.
Primetime viewership of the Comcast-owned cable network fell 54% while its daily average viewership declined to 736,000 — down from 1.1 million last month.
The declines are a sharp turnaround from Election Day, when MSNBC’s election night coverage, anchored by Rachel Maddow, averaged 6 million viewers, besting CNN’s 5.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen data.
Nielsen said that through Nov. 20, MSNBC lost over half its audience in primetime in the demo while rival CNN lost 35% of its audience in the same measurement.
Meanwhile, conservative network Fox News has been growing and now commands 73% of the cable news audience in primetime viewers and 71% in the demo, according Nielsen said.
The “Morning Joe” flap comes as MSNBC staffers are in a panic over news that Comcast is planning to spin off the NBCUniversal cable TV network and several of its other channels, in a move sparked by the rise of digital streaming.
Comcast will retain some NBC entertainment, sports and news properties, along with the Peacock streaming service, its theme parks as well as film and television studios.
