Trump wins result in viewership losses for MSNBC's Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow has shed roughly a quarter of her viewers since President Donald Trump prevailed on Election Day, marking the second time that a Trump victory turned into a loss for MSNBC's most popular host.
"The Rachel Maddow Show" averaged 2.3 million viewers from the start of 2024 until Election Day but has shed 22% for an average audience of 1.8 million from Trump's victory through March 7.
The decline is even more dramatic among the advertiser-voted demographic of adults aged 25-54, as "The Rachel Maddow Show" has lost 29% in the critical category when comparing her post-Election Day audience to 2024's total before Trump's decisive win over then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Maddow has also dropped 24% among both total viewers and the key demo when comparing the first two months of 2025 to her audience during the first two months of 2024, indicating that MSNBC viewers aren't as interested as they were when former President Biden occupied the White House.
But this is not the first time that viewers fled the lefty pundit's eponymous program immediately after MSNBC's audience was left disappointed by a Trump victory.
Maddow, an early leader of the #Resistance, famously dedicated much of the first two years of the previous Trump administration hyperventilating over whether or not he colluded with Russia. However, Special Counsel Robert Mueller eventually concluded in 2019 that a Trump campaign-Russia conspiracy didn't exist, contradicting MSNBC's daily narrative.
"The Rachel Maddow Show" quickly lost viewers when the Mueller report was released on April 18, 2019, shedding 22% of its total audience and 35% among the key demo during the first four months following the report compared to the three months prior to its release.
Cornell Law School professor and longtime media critic William Jacobson said Maddow built her following on "anti-Trump mania" by "feeding hope among her viewers that their suffering would be alleviated" by Trump losses.
"It's not surprising that an audience built around the promise of defeating Trump would significantly fade away when Trump won," Jacobson told Fox News Digital.
Maddow eventually bounced back from the Mueller-related decline and has improved her recent totals since Trump officially took office. "The Rachel Maddow Show" averaged 1.4 million total viewers and 105,000 in the demo from Election Day until the eve of Inauguration Day but has managed an average audience of 1.9 million total viewers and 177,000 in the demo since Trump was sworn in as the 47th president.
Fox News contributor Joe Concha feels Maddow has become "predictable and not credible," which is an easy way to lose viewers in the cable news business.
"The Russia collusion narrative helped lead to this lack of credibility, and without that to lean on as she did for years during the first Trump term, she appears to be one-dimensional and myopic," Concha told Fox News Digital.
Maddow cut "The Rachel Maddow Show" to once a week in 2022 to pursue other projects despite her enormous salary, but she is filling the 9 p.m. ET timeslot each weekday for the first 100 days of the Trump administration.
Maddow is set to return to only hosting her program once a week in April, reportedly making $25 million per year in the process. Concha noted that despite his criticism of Maddow she still rates "better by far than any other MSNBC host."
"When she goes back to one night a week for $25 million a year, which is one hell of a deal, the network will continue to shrink to the point where it may appear that they have more employees than actual viewers," Concha said.
MSNBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, Maddow recently scolded her employer over news that production staffers would be laid off as part of company-wide reshuffling. After her on-air criticism of MSNBC management, many Maddow critics noted that she could have offered to save a few jobs by volunteering to take a pay cut.
"Her annual salary is roughly equivalent to the combined salary of about—go figure—125 production staffers," Puck's Dylan Byers wrote.
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