Mod: Could MSNBC go down in history as the news venue that saved our democracy?MSNBC Is Having Its Super Bowl With Donald Trump’s Indictments (Vanity Fairlink): The MSNBC panel was awaiting former president Donald Trump’s Fulton County Jail mug shot, when Rachel Maddow asked her audience to register the gravity of the moment.
“I’m saying we should slow down here just for a second, because this is serious stuff for the nation, for who we are as a country,” she said last week, as
MSNBC aired the photo—the first of any current or former
United States president.
“This is not something to take lightly. Our constitutional republic depends on the very basic concept of rule by law, not rule by man,” Maddow continued. It was fitting that Trump looked so angry in the mug shot; despite being the fourth indictment and arrest this year, it was Trump’s first. “He’s embodying…the avatar for the rage that he has traded off of to become president in the first place,” Joy Reid said.
But not every moment was that earnest on
MSNBC that night. Over the course of the segment, which followed everything from Trump’s plane landing in
Atlanta to his motorcade to and from the jailhouse, the
MSNBC panel—
Reid,
Maddow,
Chris Hayes,
Lawrence O’Donnell, and
Nicolle Wallace—oscillated between analysis, weighty reflection, and, well, schadenfreude.
O’Donnell mused, was the “strawberry” hair color listed in the booking information Trump’s own description? Maddow cast a cheeky glance to her colleagues when she read his listed height: “six-foot-three.” Then came Trump’s weight—listed as 215 pounds—sending the table into hysterics.
MSNBC’s talking heads had been given the license to have a little fun. Even when
Maddow and others were reflecting on the sheer weightiness of this newscycle—that even a former president can be held accountable under the criminal justice system—a viewer could tell: This panel was relishing every part of it. And, it seems, the viewers are relishing in it all too.
MSNBC has emerged as the network of choice for viewers looking for coverage of
Trump’s criminal charges. The timing of
Trump’s arrest in
Georgia—Thursday night—didn’t correspond with
Maddow’s regular Monday slot, but the network brought her on anyway; it was an evening ripe for the heavy hitters, after all. The tactic seems to be working. The network has seen a bump in ratings recently, reportedly beating
Fox News in prime-time ratings for a full week in early June amid coverage of
Trump’s second indictment, on charges related to classified documents.
The network continued to bear the fruits of
Trump’s legal woes earlier this month, which has been
MSNBC’s most-watched in more than two years. When
Trump was indicted for the fourth time, over his efforts to overturn the
2020 election results in
Georgia,
MSNBC prevailed over
Fox News for the top three spots in the cable lineup,
Forbes reported, citing
Nielson data.
More viewers turned to MSNBC from 9 p.m. through 3 a.m. than Fox News and CNN combined. Maddow’s 9 p.m. program, which happened to feature a previously scheduled interview with Hillary Clinton, drew 3.9 million viewers, and was the number one show across all of television, including broadcast.
MSNBC beat
Fox News in prime time again the next night. “While most of the country is experiencing some level of fatigue over
Trump’s legal battles,
MSNBC’s viewership has increased with each subsequent indictment,”
Axios’s
Sara Fischer noted.
Mod: Much more at the link.
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