MSNBC's "Morning Joe" continues to see its liberal audience evaporate since co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski told viewers they met face-to-face with President-elect Donald Trump.
During the program’s 6 a.m. ET hour on Monday, Scarborough and Brzezinski revealed they traveled to Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Friday to meet with Trump, who the married co-hosts spent years insisting was a "fascist" and an overall threat to democracy.
MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" has averaged 1.1 million total viewers from 6-9 a.m. ET in 2024, but Monday’s audience fell to 769,000 as liberal viewers changed the channel after the powwow with Trump was revealed.
'MORNING JOE' CO-HOSTS HOLD FACE-TO-FACE MEETING WITH TRUMP FOR FIRST TIME IN SEVEN YEARS
On Tuesday, the audience shrunk again with 683,000 average total viewers tuning in, and it shriveled even more on Wednesday when it averaged only 618,000 total viewers.
"Morning Joe" has lost viewers each day since Monday’s admission and Wednesday's audience was 43% smaller than its year-to-date average.
Many viewers who are abandoning "Morning Joe" come from the advertiser-coveted demographic of adults age 25-54, as the program averaged 67,000 demo viewers in 2024 but drew only 26,000 on Wednesday for a staggering 61% drop.
Many high-profile liberals, including some MSNBC employees, have raged at Scarborough and Brzezinski for meeting with Trump. Left-wing Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor Jennifer Rubin encouraged viewers to stop watching the show, while comedian Rosie O’Donnell said in a TikTok post that she’s done with the program.
LIBERALS RAGE AGAINST 'MORNING JOE' 'BETRAYAL' AFTER CO-HOSTS MEET WITH TRUMP: 'WE WILL NOT FORGIVE'
Last week’s meeting was the first time the co-hosts had seen Trump in seven years, Brzezinski told viewers. Scarborough added that they didn't see "eye to eye on a lot of issues, and we told him so."
Scarborough said they went over such topics as abortion, mass deportation and threats of retribution against political opponents and media outlets. The meeting, according to the hosts, was about an agreement to "restart communications."
"Morning Joe" isn’t the only MSNBC program in dire straits since Election Day, as "All In with Chris Hayes," and Joy Reid’s "ReidOut" both had their lowest-rated programs ever among the key demo this week.
The ratings woes come as Comcast announced plans to spin off MSNBC and other struggling cable assets into a separate company.
Scarborough joked on-air that he could get "fired" once the spinoff is complete, which is expected to take about a year. "When this happens, you never know what’s going to happen," he said.
Fox News Digital’s David Rutz and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
