Americans from all walks of life are finally sick of the mainstream media’s spin — and nowhere is that more obvious that in MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s ratings this week.
For two years, Rachel Maddow has become the leading voice for the so-called “resistance” movement. Since the 2016 election, Maddow and her team have repeatedly told viewers that President Donald Trump was a traitor and under the control of the Russian government. Her liberal viewers worked themselves into a lather, and Maddow’s ratings climbed to record highs.
Friday, after Mueller released his conclusion that there is zero evidence of conspiracy by President Donald Trump to work with Russia during the 2016 presidential election, the media were left scrambling for an explanation.
For years, while alternative news outlets like The Horn News reported the truth, MSNBC and the mainstream media lied to their viewers. On Friday, those viewers were left stunned.
They didn’t come back on Monday.
Maddow and MSNBC’s ratings plunged up to 50 percent this week.
Wow, ratings for “Morning Joe,” which were really bad in the first place, just “tanked” with the release of the Mueller Report. Likewise, other shows on MSNBC and CNN have gone down by as much as 50%. Just shows, Fake News never wins!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2019
All across the media landscape, liberal pundits have been left to pick up the pieces of their failed conspiracy theory.
Their cash cow has dried up.
“It is the worst journalistic debacle of my lifetime and I’ve been in this business about 50 years,” said Fox analyst and former Washington bureau chief Brit Hume. “I’ve never seen anything quite this bad last this long.”
The National Review criticized CNN and MSNBC for routinely taking small bits of information about the investigation and blowing them up into major stories. The Review said it would be nice if some people involved in the coverage admitted they were wrong, but isn’t expecting it.
Even some liberals, like journalist Glenn Greenwald, offered sharp criticism —
For two years, MSNBC basically kept off its airwaves any liberal/left journalists who questioned their collusion narrative- and there were many! Even now, they won't let their audience hear from them. What are you afraid of? Put on @mtaibbi, @jeremyscahill, @mtracey, @aaronjmate.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 27, 2019
MSNBC – and NBC generally – purposely wanted their audience to believe that the only people who doubted or questioned their Trump/Russia conspiracy theories were Trump aides & alt-right supporters. It was active deceit. Even now, they won't air those who got the story right.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 27, 2019
For two years, Maddow and her producers cashed in on a wild, unsupported conspiracy that the White House was under the control of Russian agents.
Now, Maddow and the rest of MSNBC are paying the price.
Maddow’s audience of 2.5 million on Monday was significantly below her average this year, and it went down further to 2.3 million on Tuesday, the Nielsen company said.
Meanwhile, her head-to-head competitor on Fox News Channel, Sean Hannity, saw his audience soar on Monday to 4 million viewers, a 32 percent increase from his average. One of Trump’s most prominent media defenders, Hannity was to interview the president on Wednesday’s show.
Hannity and Maddow have run neck-and-neck atop the cable news ratings this year. Now, it’s not even close.
Fox’s Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham also saw their audiences top their averages both days, while other prime-time hosts on MSNBC and CNN saw their audiences plunge.
Maddow has been the most visible television personality taking on Trump during Mueller’s probe. As a result, she’s a target of Trump supporters seeking vindication. The New York Post compiled a mock “Mueller Madness” bracket of Trump critics with Maddow the top-seeded cable news figure, and the chart was retweeted Wednesday by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.
Maddow devoted virtually all of Monday’s show to pushing a new conspiracy — Barr has been compromised and is hiding the truth.
Truly amazing: MSNBC has succeeded in convincing a lot of people that William Barr is running around radically misrepresenting the true findings of the Mueller report & Mueller and his team of high-powered lawyers are just sitting silently by while he does it.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 27, 2019
Maddow is calling it the “Barr Report.”
About half of Tuesday’s show was on the investigation.
But was anyone watching this time?