“Resistance” television has been having a rough go of it lately.
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace has suffered a roughly 80% decline in viewership in the 25-54 age demographic since President Donald Trump left office, the Washington Free Beacon reports, citing data provided by the Nielsen Media Research.
In May, just a little over 147,000 people in this all-important demo tuned in every day to watch Wallace’s two-hour MSNBC program. In contrast, her program, which launched in 2017, averaged 543,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic in January, 297,000 in February, 177,000 in March, and 215,000 in April.
It was only a matter of time before lousy ratings caught up to cable news’ patron saint of mediocrity. Wallace’s particularly ignorant brand of analysis and her unrelenting cheerleading for the Democratic Party may have served their purpose when the Republican Party held the White House and the U.S. Senate, but now? Who needs analysis from a know-nothing, washed-up GOP operative? Very few people, apparently.
The collapse couldn’t have happened to a more deserving anchor. She tied her success directly to Trump, and now she is living with the consequences of having centered her program entirely around opposing the former president. And make no mistake, few on cable television opposed Trump in a more laughable, ludicrous, and audacious manner than Wallace.
Remember, Wallace is the same wonder-brain who, in February 2020, recited a series of tweets comparing the firing of career U.S. intelligence officials to the slaughter of six million Jews. The author of the tweets, the Brookings Institution’s Benjamin Wittes, “goes there,” Wallace assured her audience, “putting the acts of revenge we’re seeing from Donald Trump in a provocative historical frame that you may or may not agree with, but it will make you think.”
Spoiler alert: The tweet thread does not, in fact, “make you think.”
“First he came for [former FBI Director James Comey],” Wallace said, reciting word-for-word Wittes’ bizarre and, frankly, offensive screed, which is just a lazy and inartful rip-off of the old quote about inaction in the face of evil. “And I said nothing because I was mad at Comey because of the Clinton email investigation and blamed him for Trump’s election.”
“Then he came to [former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe],” she continued, “and I said nothing because there was this inspector general report that said McCabe lacked candor.”
It goes on for another six tweets, the cable host unironically comparing the supposed indignities “suffered” by Comey and McCabe to the horrors of the Holocaust.
This analysis isn’t insightful, bold, or intelligent. It’s not even thought-provoking. But it is completely on-brand for a network television burnout. It is on-brand for the woman who bought her way back into elite society by hawking insider gossip regarding the time she served as an adviser to Sarah Palin’s failed vice presidential campaign. Chucking out anti-Trump red meat is about the only thing Wallace has ever been good at. And now that Trump is gone, so are her ratings.
I mean, how long could the viewership boost have lasted for the same anchor who, after Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren failed to capture even a single delegate in the 2020 New Hampshire primary, declared the Massachusetts lawmaker a masterful campaigner for her willingness to take photos with supporters?
What did we expect would happen to the anchor who told failed 2020 Democratic primary candidate Beto O’Rourke that it is “clear” he had “that thing that not all politicians have”?
What did we expect would happen to the anchor who told convicted felon Michael Avenatti in 2018 he “hit a lot of the right notes” when he tested the electoral waters in Iowa? Democrats “would be foolish to underestimate” him, Wallace said.
Wallace assured her audience a group of children with Twitter accounts would rein in the National Rifle Association. This didn’t happen.
She claimed the Second Amendment was created for the purpose of fighting “foreign militias.” This is not true.
She said the Parkland shooting was a news story only because “17 white kids were” killed. The 17 victims weren’t all white, and they weren’t all “kids” (three adults died).
She alleged in January 2019 that the White House’s contention there is a crisis at the border is part of a “big scam.” There is “not a crisis,” she said. Later, after reading a New York Times article, Wallace declared the situation at the border a “humanitarian crisis.”
In August 2019, she claimed Trump was paving the way for the total extermination of Latinos. She predicted Trump would imprison journalists if he won reelection in 2020. She claimed the president would have “blood on his hands” if minority members of Congress ever fall victim to a “racially inspired attack.” Wallace also compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, claiming the former president’s use of the term “nationalist” was reminiscent of the rise of Nazi Germany.
“I watch enough History Channel to know that they cheered at Hitler, too,” Wallace said.
There is more where this comes from, but you obviously get the picture. Wallace’s program is indisputably bad television, and the only thing that propped her up the past couple of years was the comfort she offered anti-Trump audiences. Well, they don’t need comforting anymore.
If it’s any consolation to Wallace, she is not the only “resistance” personality to suffer a ratings collapse in the wake of the Trump presidency.
CNN’s Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo have experienced similarly sharp declines in viewership since Trump’s exit, as has MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (who also suffered a particularly sharp drop immediately following the implosion of the Russian “collusion” story).
Wallace is merely the latest in a long string of pro-Democratic activists play-acting as news anchors and commentators to suffer the effects of losing one of the best things to happen to the news media since the invention of the printing press.
