MSNBC news anchor, Rachel Maddow responded to the election results by declaring that she has been given “marching orders from the universe” to protect democracy from its own president-elect because “this is what we’re on this earth to do”.
“Half the country went to bed sad tonight but then woke up tomorrow fired up with a new sense of purpose,” she told viewers.
In reality, most of the country was watching someone else.
Ratings on Maddow’s weekly show and MSNBC as a whole have collapsed after Mr Trump romped home in the election, winning the popular vote and all of the seven closest battleground states.
Republicans also won back the Senate and would later maintain control of the House of Representatives.
Maddow, whom a magazine profiler once called the “wonkiest anchor on television”, is also one of its best paid and, according to Fox news, earns a reported $25 million salary on a five-year contract.
Bob’s Burger’s beats viewing figures
However, the news outlet reported that her pay had been cut from a high of $30 million as part of a new deal this month.
The pay cut comes as the bespectacled Democrat’s viewership is falling faster.
Her flagship Rachel Maddow show, which has been on the air since 2008, attracted just 1.3 million viewers when it aired on Monday, being beaten by episodes of Bob’s Burgers and Family Guy, tongue-in-cheek animated comedies for adults, in the same time slot.
Among the key 25 to 54 demographic, highly sought-after by advertisers, the show attracted a mere 84,000 viewers.
MSNBC as a whole has lost 47 per cent of its audience since election night compared to the rest of the year, data from Nielsen Media Research shows.
It averaged just 497,000 total-day viewers, of whom just 49,000 were aged 25-54.
Rachel Maddow on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert – CBS Photo Archive
Since the scale of Mr Trump’s victory became clear, the verdict of audiences has been swift and brutal.
CNN, a rival liberal broadcaster, has seen its own decline of 33 per cent in total-day viewers – which is significant, but less pronounced than MSNBC.
MSBNC is being dragged down – and its highest-paid and best-known anchor could be to blame.
Maddow speaks with an emotional and quasi-religious fervour about the causes she takes up.
She wears her emotions and political inclinations – the two are rarely separated – on her smart black blazer sleeve.
In a country that has moved further towards Mr Trump since 2016, Maddow risks being thrust into political irrelevance as she is abandoned by her Left-wing base.
Left-leaning viewers are either growing tired of progressive hysteria prompted by Mr Trump’s appointment, or growing wise to the fact that Maddow’s brand of patronising lefty preaching does not help the Democrats to win elections.
In 2018, amid reports that children who illegally crossed the border had been taken from their parents and kept in cages as part of the Trump administration’s “family separation” policy, she burst into tears.
“Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children –” she said before breaking off and placing a hand to her lips. “To at least three –” and stopped again.
MSNBC
Eventually she was forced to hand over to Lawrence O’Donnell, the veteran anchor waiting stony-faced in front of the camera.
Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race in June to hand over the baton to Kamala Harris also drew an emotional reaction.
“There is no single thing that he has done in that entire career that is a greater or more consequential act of service and sacrifice to this country than what he has done today,” Maddow said, her voice trembling throughout the monologue.
MSNBC
At several points she raised her eyes to the sky – or at least the ceiling of the studio – as she spoke about how Mr Biden’s “superpower is being underestimated”.
The 81-year-old president had been forced by his own party to step aside after a disastrous debate performance following three weeks of pressure and threats from within the Democrat camp.
In reality, Mr Biden falling on his sword and Maddow’s lengthy monologues about the threat Mr Trump apparently posed to American democracy did nothing to stop the Republican marching back to the White House.
Purging pro-Trump voices
Along with her MSNBC colleagues, the news anchor has attempted to keep a tight grip on the broadcaster’s ideological purity and purge voices aligned with Mr Trump.
Maddow was one of several big names to come out against the hiring of Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican National Committee chief, as an analyst for MSNBC’s cable affiliate NBC News.
Executives had seemingly wanted a Right-wing voice who could speak to Mr Trump’s political campaign, as he blew his Republican primary rivals out of the water en route to claiming his party’s presidential nomination.
Maddow responded in typical terms. “I mean, you wouldn’t hire a wiseguy, you wouldn’t hire a made man like a mobster to work at a DA’s office, right?” she said.
“You wouldn’t hire a pickpocket to work as a TSA screener. And so I find the decision to put her on the payroll, it’s inexplicable, and I hope they will reverse their decision.”
Ms McDaniel was offered a contract, but did not take the job.
Fox News
One of the big beneficiaries of Mr Trump’s election win is Fox News, which beat its rivals by drawing 10 million viewers on election night and seeing its audience surge by 24 per cent in the weeks since then.
Apart from winning the ratings war, many of its commentators and presenters are being pulled off the air and into the new administration – notably Pete Hegseth, who has been nominated as defence secretary. Fox seems to have its finger on the American zeitgeist.
When Elon Musk publicly mused about buying MSNBC, Joe Rogan, the podcaster, joked that he would take Maddow’s job – as well as her signature dark suit look – at the beleaguered broadcaster.
“If you buy MSNBC I would like Rachael Maddow’s job. I will wear the same outfit and glasses, and I will tell the same lies,” he told the Tesla billionaire.
Mr Musk buying MSNBC at this stage looks unlikely, and Maddow’s audience may yet return in droves following what many will have regarded as a shattering election defeat.
But it speaks to how Rogan and other “alternative media” figures are in the ascendancy – and never more so since Mr Trump’s win. MSNBC and Maddow, once fixtures in the media landscape and buffered by a devoted viewership, suddenly look replaceable.
