Viewers continue to bolt from Morning Joe amid fallout over hosts ‘kissing the ring’ at Mar-a-Lago

The plunging ratings at MSNBC’s flagship morning show comes at a perilous time as the cable news network’s parent company is set to spin it off from the rest of NBCUniversal.

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.

According to Nielsen, the four-hour broadcast of Morning Joe drew only 680,000 total viewers on Tuesday, representing a 12 percent dip from Monday’s airing. Additionally, the program only averaged 86,000 viewers in the coveted advertising demographic of adults aged 25-54, also down 12 percent from the previous day.

Compared to the average viewership for 2024, Morning Joe’s total audience on Tuesday was down 38 percent and 37 percent in the key demo. Tuesday also represented the third-lowest-rated Morning Joe broadcast of the year. This further continues the slide that began the moment Scarborough and Brzezinski revealed on Monday that they had recently sat down with Trump to “restart communications.”

The hosts of MSNBC’s influential Morning Joe news and comment show returned to air on July 16 after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. (MSNBC)

The moment the husband-and-wife pair opened Monday’s show by dramatically announcing they’d sought to mend fences with the incoming president, after spending years describing him as a threat to democracy and a “fascist,” droves of MSNBC’s devoted anti-Trump viewers flipped the channel.

While it’s typical for the show to grow its audience throughout the morning, Morning Joe lost viewers immediately after the announcement. During the 6 a.m. block, the program averaged 839,000 total viewers and 113,000 in the 25-54 demographic. The next hour, though, overall viewership dropped to 694,000 and sunk 38 percent in the demo.

That hour-to-hour dropoff, according to Nielsen, was based on the “live plus same day” ratings — which track both live viewership and those who watch the program later via DVR. The Nov. 18 telecast had an unusually high number of “time-shifted” viewers who watched via recording the hour that the Morning Joe hosts announced the Mar-a-Lago visit. While 426,000 viewers tuned in live to watch the 6 a.m. hour, another 413,000 checked it out later in the day on DVR. The DVR audience for the first hour was 77 percent higher than the week before. Subsequent hours for that broadcast saw much smaller “time-shifted” viewership numbers.

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.”

Meanwhile, sources told CNN that the primary motivation behind Brezinski’s and Scarborough’s Mar-a-Lago visit was their fear of MAGA retribution. “According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Scarborough and Brzezinski were credibly concerned that they could face governmental and legal harassment from the incoming Trump administration,” Brian Stelter reported.

Puck’s Dylan Byers added that the pair’s fears that Trump would seek revenge “became far more acute” once MAGA firebrand Matt Gaetz was nominated as attorney general. Especially since former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon immediately boasted that Gaetz would go after their network for trying “to destroy” the incoming president.

Brzezinski and Scarborough “are petrified of retribution and of Gaetz opening an investigation” into the baseless conspiracy theory that Scarborough murdered an intern in 2001, according to Byers. After Trump’s once-cozy relationship with the MSNBC power couple soured following his first election victory, the president-elect repeatedly peddled the unhinged story — apparently at the urging of Gaetz. A network spokesperson disputed this characterization and denied it.

Though Morning Joe’s recent ratings woes may somewhat be self-inflicted, MSNBC as a whole has seen dejected viewers flee since Trump won. Last week, the network saw its lowest ratings in 25 years in the key 25-54 demo, losing 50 percent of its audience compared to the rest of 2024. While viewership at its MAGA rival Fox News has surged to record levels, MSNBC’s primetime lineup only averaged 684,000 total viewers last week.

On top of all that, Comcast’s decision to move MSNBC and other slowly dying cable channels into a separate company has left many MSNBC employees worried about their futures — including Joe and Mika.

“I could be completely wrong: we could all be fired a year from now,” Scarborough quipped on Wednesday. “Or tomorrow,” Brzezinski added.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Dec. 3 to include additional ratings information from Nielsen.