MSNBC viewers continue to give Morning Joe the cold shoulder following the revelation that hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski trekked to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President-elect Donald Trump.
The precipitous ratings drop comes at the worst possible time for the morning talk show. On Wednesday, parent company Comcast announced that it was spinning off most of NBCUniversal’s cable channel lineup amid rampant cord-cutting — including cable news networks MSNBC and CNBC.
A representative for MSNBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Amid the intense blowback from viewers and critics alike, with some blasting the hosts’ “disgusting show of obeisance in advance” while accusing them of being “double agents,” the MSNBC stars have dismissed the criticism. “I saw for the first time what a massive disconnect there was between social media and the real world because we were flooded with phone calls from people all day, literally around the world—all very positive, very supportive,” Scarborough told viewers on Tuesday.
“They need FEMA there at this point—that’s the level of disaster they created,” one rival network executive told media reporter Oliver Darcy about the mess Morning Joe needs to clean up with its audience. Even some MSNBC colleagues have slammed the stars’ “cowardice,” with host Katie Phang tweeting: “Normalizing Trump is a bad idea. Period.”
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Article URL : https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/morning-joe-ratings-drop-mar-a-lago-trump-b2651707.html