Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough have more than weathered Trump’s tweetstorm about their looks and intelligence. The pair recently published an op-ed that took the chief tweeter to task while doing their best Mariah Carey impression, and Scarborough’s now one EP closer to rock stardom. Among his other insults, Trump said the morning show as “poorly rated,” which is an increasingly dubious claim. According to The Hollywood Reporter, being the target of presidential ire could have worked in Morning Joe’s favor, as the morning show’s ratings surged ahead of the holiday weekend.
Morning Joe producer Jesse Rodriguez first refuted Trump’s claims about low viewership last Tuesday, tweeting an MSNBC press release about the show’s impressive ratings.
Now there’s more fuel for that fire, as Friday’s Morning Joe ratings were 66 percent higher than average, with the show nabbing about 408,000 viewers in the adults 25-54 demographic (a 73 percent jump). All of this was enough to push Morning Joe past Fox & Friends, a development that will probably have Trump choking on his bile. Before the executive circus peanut fires up his Tweetdeck, MSNBC seems to be having a good ratings year in general, with gains of “58 percent in adults 25-54 and 60 percent among total viewers” compared to ratings from June 2016.