Rachel Maddow Wins Ratings War, Tops Sean Hannity, As Trump Presidency Reels Over Cohen, Manafort Developments
There has been a lot of news to track this week in relation to President Donald Trump, his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, and Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort. Rachel Maddow has been reporting all of the details on her MSNBC show, and other show hosts across cable news have been reporting the details as they emerge as well. From the looks of the ratings that have emerged for both Tuesday and Wednesday nights, Maddow’s shows have been the top go-to resource for many people.
Deadline details that Tuesday night’s episode of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC came out on top in ratings in comparison to the other evening cable news programs. Rachel pulled in 3.89 million viewers, compared to Sean Hannity’s show bringing in 3.26 million and Cuomo Prime Time on CNN getting 1.83 million for that same time block.
In fact, Tuesday’s episode was Maddow’s second-highest show ever in terms of ratings. Rachel’s top-rated episode remains her March 2017 show where she shared documentation related to President Trump’s 2005 tax returns. That episode garnered 4.13 million viewers.
Tuesday’s show this week focused on Michael Cohen turning himself in and pleading guilty to eight counts of campaign finance violations and fraud. At virtually the same moment, Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort was found guilty of 8 out of 18 counts in his fraud trial and that made for an intense episode of TRMS.
TV ratings: MSNBC's Rachel Maddow winning Cohen, Manafort-palooza so far https://t.co/R24ZeuvCFQ pic.twitter.com/iJz9EoVhVN
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) August 23, 2018
It looks like all of the MSNBC shows performed strongly Tuesday night, with Chris Hayes, Brian Williams, Ari Melber, Chuck Todd, and Chris Matthews all snagging their highest-ever number of viewers. In addition, MSNBC topped Fox and CNN for the night, although Fox won the day by a hair over MSNBC.
When it came to Wednesday’s ratings, Maddow scored big again. The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Rachel brought in 3.57 million viewers for her Wednesday night show, compared to 3.14 million for Hannity. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell also did very well on Wednesday night with 2.65 million viewers. As a result of these strong performances, MSNBC edged out Fox with their Wednesday ratings.
Will MSNBC’s streak continue and can Rachel Maddow keep topping her competitors with her evening cable news reporting? Those who have been tuning in to The Rachel Maddow Show since before the Trump presidency started to know that she was one of the first to start digging into the apparent connections between the campaign and Russia, and she’s been dedicated to tracking all of the latest developments. She’s definitely on a roll this week and her viewers will be anxious to see if she can keep the stellar ratings going.
