The fake news feud between “Morning Joe” and Donald Trump is paying dividends for MSNBC’s super-couple. After Trump tweeted about “low I.Q.. Crazy” Mika Brzezinski’s bloody “facelift” and “Psycho Joe” Scarborough, the show they co-host racked up its biggest ratings ever.
As highlighted by Newsday, the Nielsen ratings for Friday, the day after Trump’s infamous tweet, are now officially in and Joe and Mika scored big time with 1.66 million people watching their morning show — a number that edges their previous record. (And guess who gets the credit for that previous record too? It came the day after Trump was elected…)
“Friday’s ‘Morning Joe’ proved more popular than Trump’s favorite morning show, ‘Fox & Friends,'” notes Newsday, in what is apparently supposed to be a dig at The Donald.
For those who didn’t bother to follow the “facelift” freakout, it all started with one of Trump’s standard morning tweets, in which he decided it was a great time to take aim at an enemy (who once was an ally).
“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore),” tweeted Trump on Thursday. “Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”
Cue the media hysteria, revive the debates over Trump’s tweeting habits, and ramp up the calls for impeachment/resignation/exile(?). So, you know, the usual usual.
Trump revealed through a tweet on Friday that he was in fact one of the 1.66 million watching the Joe and Mika, tweeting, “Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show.”
Trump’s comments about the National Enquirer article are yet another chapter of the “Morning Joe”-Trump saga, the co-hosts now accusing Trump of having used an article by the tabloid as blackmail to try to curb their critiques of him. It’s more hysterical media red meat.
Meanwhile, a few days later and another tweet, this time of Trump bodyslamming “CNN” in a ridiculous meme, and everyone’s already forgotten about the ancient fake news about Mika’s face. That tweet resulted in CNN’s attempts to get Trump kicked off Twitter and a high-profile reporters group accusing Trump of threatening “physical violence against journalists“(!).
Speaking of the Trump bodyslam meme: Trump addressed the issue while in Poland on Thursday.
“I think what CNN did was unfortunate for them. As you know now, they have some pretty serious problems. They have been fake news for a long time. They’ve been covering me in a very dishonest way,” he said.
“CNN has really taken it too seriously, and I think they’ve hurt themselves very badly. Very, very badly,” Trump said. “What we want to see in the United States is honest, beautiful, free, but honest press. We want to see fair press. I think it’s a very important thing. We don’t want fake news. By the way, not everybody is fake news, but we don’t want fake news. Bad thing. Very bad for our country.”
It may be bad for the country, but it’s great for the ratings.