Amid the political fallout surrounding the Biden campaign, viewership for left-leaning MSNBC has fallen to an annual low. Several weeks ago, President Biden delivered an abysmal performance in the first presidential debate against former President Donald Trump, leading to rampant concerns about the incumbent’s ability to serve a second term.
MSNBC programs have continually vouched for Biden’s cognitive health, dismissing conservative criticism. However, the progressive outlet’s coverage changed drastically in the aftermath of the debate, which highlighted concerns about Biden’s ability to serve a second term, featuring calls from Democrats and analysts for the president to step aside.
Subsequently, ratings data suggests that viewers tuned out from the network, where reports show during the week of July 1-7, MSNBC only averaged 569,000 total day viewers. Furthermore, the network’s ratings among the key 25-54 advertising demographic plummeted to an annual low of 56,000. These ratings are in stark contrast to the Memorial Day ratings from earlier this year, where it saw an average of 957,000 total day viewers and 103,000 in the advertising demographic, proving that the network normally attains stronger ratings during holidays.
President Biden recently called into MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where he explained to co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that he would remain in the race, defying the ongoing calls from Democrats to step aside and let a younger candidate take his place. “The bottom line here is that we’re not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere. I wouldn’t be running if I didn’t absolutely believe that I’m the best candidate to beat Donald Trump in 2024,” Biden said.
The president added that his party had a democratic process to determine that he is the best candidate, while emphasizing his belief that he can defeat Trump in a rematch. “We had a democratic nominating process for the voters, so clearly I won 14 million of those, etc. So I just want, I not only believe that from the beginning, but I wanted to reassert and demonstrate this too, and I’m going to be doing that all through this week and from here on.”
Furthermore, The American Tribune reported on “Morning Joe’s” reaction to the presidential debate, which proved to be a disaster for Biden. Pivoting from their previous defense of Biden’s mental health, the atmosphere quickly became tense as they discussed the ramifications of his debate performance between Joe Scarborough and MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle.
Mika Brzezinski quickly snapped, attempting to restore order on the frantic panel. “Everybody calm down, and I’ll tell you why. It’s fine not to spin what happened last night, and we’re not going to. He had a terrible night.” Scarborough hit back, “Mika, everybody’s calm here. You’re the only one raising your voice. Everybody is calm here.”
Scarborough continued, “We always show balance. Second, nobody’s panicking. I said these are questions Democrats and Joe Biden need to ask themselves, and Mike said he missed one pitch down the middle after another, and he wasn’t up to it last night.” He added, “It’s not panic at this point to understand what’s at stake in this election.”
Watch the interview below:
Featured image credit: Tony Webster from Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MSNBC_on_TV_(43767179152).jpg
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