
Lesbian political commentator Rachel Maddow will resume hosting her eponymous MSNBC program The Rachel Maddow Show five nights a week during the first 100 days of the incoming administration of soon-to-be President Donald Trump. She began hosting the program only on Monday nights in May 2022 to focus on four podcasts, a new book, and film projects.
Maddow’s new schedule will begin on the night of Trump’s inauguration on January 20 and go until April 30. The first 100 days of each new presidency has become a somewhat arbitrary measure of the leader’s effectiveness in using their political capital, generally high favorability ratings, and eagerness of a new Congress to advance their agenda, according to Voice of America.
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Rachel Maddow blasts MSNBC for “inexplicable” hiring of election denier Ronna McDaniel
She said it’s like a district attorney hiring a mobster.
“In the first Trump term, one of the things that we learned was this idea of watching what they do, not what they say,” Maddow recently told USA Today. “The actions of the administration are often much more consequential than whatever crazy thing he’s recently said.”
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Maddow acknowledged that news viewership typically goes down following an election. Indeed, MSNBC’s viewership declined 46% after the election compared to the first 10 months of the year, according to The Los Angeles Times. However, she said she expects many viewers to re-engage because Trump’s second term will have serious consequences for many Americans.
When Maddow scaled back her hosting responsibilities in May 2022, journalist Alex Wagner took over, keeping the original show’s monologue and guest interview format but changing the program’s name to Alex Wagner Tonight. Starting on January 20, Wagner will begin hosting a field reporting series entitled “Trumpland: The First 100 Days” in which she examines Trump’s policies’ impacts on communities across the nation.
Maddow provided her insights and commentaries throughout the election season, expressing shock at the outrageous personal questions asked in Trump hiring forms, mentioning the one “very easily disprovable lie” that Vice President-elect J.D. Vance told at his debate and also raised worries about Trump’s eventual victory early into the campaign.
Acknowledging the end of fact-checking on increasingly right-leaning social media networks and the rise in people who get news through those networks (as opposed to TV news journalists), Maddow said, “As long as we’re still here, our job is pretty clear: Follow the facts, don’t be intimidated, tell true stories, help people understand the world. And I’m going to keep doing that.”
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