MSNBC’s Morning Joe enjoyed a large ratings spike on Friday, the day after President Donald Trump singled out hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough in a series of scathing tweets.
According to Nielsen data, Morning Joe averaged 1.66 million viewers on Friday, with 408,000 viewers in the key adults 25-54 demographic. That made the MSNBC program the number one cable news morning show of the day, topping perennial winner Fox & Friends on Fox News, which drew 1.56 million viewers and 353,000 in the demo.
Last Thursday, Trump personally attacked Brzezinski and Scarborough via his Twitter account, calling them “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” and “Psycho Joe.” He also claimed Brzezinski “was bleeding badly from a face-lift” when he saw her on New Years Eve. Trump’s comment drew some condemnation on Capitol Hill, including from conservatives like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has sometimes been a critic of the president.
“Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America,” Graham wrote.
The war of words between the President and the cable news hosts continued from there, with Brzezinski and Scarborough claiming that they were told that if they called and apologized to the president, he would have an unflattering National Enquirer story spiked.
Trump continued the assault on Saturday, tweeting, “Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika are not bad people, but their low rated show is dominated by their NBC bosses. Too bad!”
