TURNED OFF

‘Morning Joe’ Ratings Fall After Trump Meeting Announcement

Nielsen data showed a drop in viewers after the 6 a.m. hour.

After the co-anchors of MSNBC’s Morning Joe announced Monday that they had met with president-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago the previous Friday as part of what they dubbed a “new approach” for covering him, many viewers of the program turned their focus elsewhere, according to Nielsen data.

The numbers, obtained by Mediaite, show that after Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski broke the news shortly after 6 a.m., 38 percent of those in the 25-54 demographic had stopped watching by the next hour.

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While strictly live viewership did increase in the next hour, live plus same day viewership dropped over the same time frame, according to data obtained by the Daily Beast after publication of this article.

Given the show’s early morning time slot, viewership typically rises from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. President Joe Biden has been known to tune in regularly.

The anchors' decision to see Trump was widely criticized. The show has since turned off comments on their posts on X, and hasn’t posted clips of the show either Monday or Tuesday.

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A source close to the show told the Daily Beast that the meeting with Trump was “f---ing worth it“ because it may help keep him from constantly bashing the press, which he has called the ”enemy of the people."

In an interview Monday with Fox News, Trump said it was “very important, if not vital, to have a free, fair and open media or press.”

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