Joe Scarborough spent seven years calling Donald Trump a fascist.
Then Trump won – and Scarborough flew to Mar-a-Lago to beg for mercy.
Now the network just cut his show by an hour and an insider says he nearly quit altogether.
The Groveling That Started It All
Remember what Joe Scarborough said about Donald Trump before the 2024 election.
He warned viewers Trump "will imprison, he will execute whoever he's allowed to."
Mika Brzezinski called Trump "a dark, dismal fascist."
For seven years, Morning Joe was the flagship of anti-Trump hysteria on cable television.
Then Trump won in a landslide.
Ten days after the election, Scarborough and Brzezinski flew to Mar-a-Lago.
They hadn't spoken to Trump in seven years.
Now they were sitting across from him – the man they'd called Hitler – trying to "restart communications." Trump described the meeting as "extremely cordial."
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Of course he did. He won.
Megyn Kelly called it "an absurd farce." Journalist Glenn Greenwald said the pair were "the most humiliating and pathetic people in all of corporate media" and that the visit was about one thing: saving their jobs by reestablishing access to the man they'd spent years destroying.
They were right.
A Network in Free Fall
MS NOW – formerly MSNBC – doesn't want you doing the math.
Fox News averaged 2.72 million primetime viewers in 2025.
MS NOW averaged 923,000 – and that was down 25 percent from the year before.
Their key advertising demographic, adults 25–54, collapsed by 39 percent.
Those aren't bad numbers. Those are network-death numbers.
The rebrand from MSNBC to MS NOW didn't help.
The name change launched with a $20 million ad campaign and resulted in MS NOW posting its worst total day ratings since 2015.
Fox News held 14 of the 15 most-watched cable news programs all year. MS NOW held one slot – Rachel Maddow, once a week on Mondays.
Morning Joe specifically saw its audience fall 39 percent from July 2024 to August 2025.
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In the first quarter of 2025, CNN's morning show actually beat Morning Joe in the key demographic for the first time since 2022. CNN.
The network that's been trying to rebuild its own collapsed audience.
The Real Reason Scarborough Stayed
MS NOW announced Wednesday that Morning Joe will drop from four hours to three hours starting in June.
The official explanation is that Scarborough and Brzezinski are "beaten up" by the grind.
A Fox News insider close to the show revealed something more damning: Scarborough probably would have walked away entirely if Kamala Harris had won.
He "stuck around" specifically because Trump won – stayed to maintain relevance during a Trump presidency – and now he's pulling back.
The man Scarborough called a fascist dictator became the reason Scarborough kept his job.
Meanwhile, the network is promoting Alicia Menendez – daughter of convicted felon and disgraced New Jersey senator Bob Menendez – to her own show.
And Luke Russert, son of the late Meet the Press anchor Tim Russert, gets elevated to full-time host. MS NOW is cutting back a sinking show while promoting nepo babies whose last names got them in the door.
MS NOW Posted Its Worst Ratings Since 1997 and Called It a Strategy
MS NOW's daytime programming – the block surrounding and following Morning Joe – rated 47 percent lower than its primetime block in 2025.
The network's president Rebecca Kutler is hoping to fix that by reshuffling chairs on a sinking ship.
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Stephanie Ruhle moves to mornings.
Ali Velshi gets The 11th Hour. New anchor to be announced for the 11 a.m. slot. Lots of movement. Zero acknowledgment of the core problem: the audience left because the product failed.
They spent years telling conservatives they were deplorables and telling liberal viewers that Trump was going to end democracy – and when democracy kept going and Trump kept winning, nobody believed them anymore.
The audience Scarborough built on Trump outrage stopped showing up when the outrage stopped working.
MS NOW reshuffled the schedule and called it a strategy.
The ratings will tell the rest of the story.
Trump didn't destroy Morning Joe. Scarborough did.
Sources:
- Brian Flood and Joseph Wulfsohn, "MSNBC Cuts Hour Off Morning Joe," Fox News Digital, March 18, 2026.
- Tim Graham, "The Year in Ratings: Fox News Soars, MS NOW Is Down, Down, Down," NewsBusters, December 30, 2025.
- "MSNBC Suffered Massive Ratings Plunge in 2025," Slay News, January 3, 2026.
- "Morning Joe Co-Hosts Shredded as Reactions Pour In to Groveling Surrender to Trump," BizPacReview, November 20, 2024.
- "Megyn Kelly Has Four-Letter Response to Joe Scarborough's Trump Visit," Newsweek, November 19, 2024.
- Mike LaChance, "MSNBC's Rebrand as MSNOW Has Not Helped Their Ratings," The Gateway Pundit, December 30, 2025.