By Joseph Simonson
Few cable hosts have suffered more from President Donald Trump leaving office than MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.
According to analytics provided by Nielsen Media Research, Wallace’s 4 p.m. show Deadline: White House has seen a nearly 80 percent drop in viewership since January 2021 in the critical 25-54 demographic. At the end of May, just 147,000 non-geriatrics above the age of 25 tuned into her two-hour MSNBC program per day.
Although Wallace has worked hard to channel her previous experience as a White House press secretary into her role as an unofficial spokesperson for the Democratic Party, the results have been abysmal with a Democrat in the White House. Her total viewership in the month of May is less than half of her total viewership in January.
During the Trump years, Wallace’s bizarre conduct—she once compared the firing of U.S. intelligence officials to the Holocaust and confused the sound of a soda can opening on air with gun shots—paid off handsomely. Although her explicit endorsements of candidates, such as Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren (D.), who she called a “really, really, really good candidate,” or Michael Avenatti, who she said the press should not “underestimate” as a presidential contender, were almost certainly net negatives, Wallace managed to capture MSNBC’s audience.
With both the presidency and Congress under Democratic control, Wallace’s work appears complete. Instead of offering strategic advice to Democrats on how to best defeat Trump, Wallace is now forced to run interference for career bureaucrats like Dr. Anthony Fauci. In an interview this month with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, Wallace said his newly disclosed emails make him “look good.”
Wallace can take comfort in the fact that her loss of viewership is consistent with the performance of her other liberal competitors. Jake Tapper, who hosts The Lead on CNN, oversaw an over 66 percent decrease in viewership when compared to January 2021.
