The two leading faces of Trump Derangement Syndrome on cable TV rose on November 6 to find themselves staring up from a cavernous hole of their own making. But that doesn’t mean CNN and MSNBC are going to stop digging.
CNN staffers are struggling with the threat of promised massive layoffs early in 2025 while corporate ownership has announced plans to spin MSNBC off from the NBC News tree, further cementing its looming destiny as zombie filler channel ala A&E or USA Network. These things didn’t happen in a vacuum. Both networks devoted a staggering amount of airtime over the past four years to painting President-elect Donald Trump as the greatest threat to democracy in US history, only to see him resoundingly returned to the White House by American voters this year, with an outright popular vote majority to boot.
In the month since, the night has only grown darker over the dying cable landscape.
Clicking Off MSNBC
“On November 26, MSNBC had the lowest-rated, non-holiday weekday among the advertiser-coveted demographic of adults aged 25-54 in 20 years,” competitor Fox News gleefully reported on December 2. “MSNBC managed only 38,000 average demo viewers, its smallest non-holiday audience among the critical viewers since July 19, 2004.”
Everywhere one looks, the numbers aren’t just bad for MSNBC, they are catastrophic. “Multiple MSNBC programs have lost more than half their audience since Election Day when comparing [25-54] demo viewership to 2024 averages,” Fox relates. Among those are shows hosted by Stephanie Ruhle, Chris Hayes, Jen Psaki, Joy Reid and $25-million-a-year MSNBC “star” Rachel Maddow.
The crisis is far worse than either network probably imagines. Whereas CNN and MSNBC not so long ago could at least count on drumming up a certain amount of “controversy” cachet from their wildly partisan hot takes disguised as journalism, it would appear Americans aren’t interested enough to even be angry with them anymore.
The “reporting” and “news analysis” are every bit as outrageous as before, but as the general public deals with a severe case of Joe Biden Fatigue after four years of dreary social, economic and cultural outcomes, televised regurgitations of the talking points Biden leaned so heavily on to distract from his actions are today more stale than a cluster of social distancing circles drawn on a playground during the coronavirus pandemic.
Yawns Instead of Ire
On December 3, a CNN panel stretched to compare South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived declaration of martial law in his country to Trump’s coming second term.
“Obviously, we around the table should talk about why this should be an important thing for Americans to pay attention to, particularly given that Donald Trump is about to be president in a number of weeks, who has said wants to use the military to go after his own enemies,” CNN White House correspondent MJ Lee declared.
MSNBC has been just as blustering, busily conjuring a Trump Monster at every opportunity.
“Biden considering pre-emptive pardons of potential targets of Trump's retribution,” is the headline to an Andrea Mitchell Reports video clip from December 6.
“‘Very ego-driven’: European leaders feel they have ‘no choice’ but to flatter Trump, Crowley says,” screams a headline to an MSNBC clip of an interview with The New York Times diplomatic correspondent Michael Crowley.
“Imperial presidency” is the two-word quote-teaser to a Joy Reid clip about Trump’s planned mass deportations of illegal aliens, while “this is insane” is the quote-tease to a clip about X owner Elon Musk’s prominent role in the incoming Trump administration.
There’s nothing subtle about any of this. Sadly for MSNBC, however, there isn’t anything remotely edgy or worthy of engagement either as the last full month of Biden’s creaking presidency winds down.
In a further bizarre act of self-marginalization from the genuine concerns of hundreds of millions of Americans struggling to cope with inflation and other pressing daily matters, CNN on December 4 conducted an interview with a ten-year-old “transgender” child who fears “I’m gonna be, like, murdered” for speaking out.
On December 3, CNN also interviewed trans ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio, fresh off of an appearance before the US Supreme Court to argue against Tennessee’s law protecting children from being given life-altering treatments in the name of “gender identity.”
“These are young people who may have known since they were two years old exactly who they are, who suffered for six or seven years before they had any relief,” Strangio told CNN.
Two years old? This is precisely the kind of vintage Barack Obama and Joe Biden-era manufactured issue, designed to spur outrage, that Americans simply have no time for after dropping $100 in the supermarket checkout aisle for 2-3 days of food.
It should come as no surprise, however, that it finds a welcome home at a network that never has wanted to report what is really happening in the United States. That was always the driving method behind the madness. As CNN and MSNBC may or may not eventually learn, it is a method that will not fly any longer. Four years of Joe Biden and the damage done have rendered it fully inoperable.
.png&w=1920&q=75)
.png&w=1920&q=75)
