Rachel Maddow is returning to MSNBC in full force with “The Rachel Maddow Show” coming back for five nights per week during the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.
Since 2022, Maddow’s show has aired only on Mondays at 9 p.m. ET, with “Alex Wagner Tonight” filling the time slot on the other days. Now, Wagner will travel the country reporting for “Trumpland: The First 100 Days” segments, which air through April 30, covering the impacts of Trump’s early policies and promises on the electorate. Maddow and Wagner will return to their normal schedules on May 1.
Maddow will lead MSNBC’s live coverage of the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20 beginning at 10 a.m. ET. She will be joined by Wagner, Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid, Ari Melber, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O’Donnell, Stephanie Ruhle and Jen Psaki.
“In the first Trump term, one of the things that we learned was this idea of watching what they do, not what they say. Trump is a real master of shifting the news cycle toward himself and away from himself as best suits his purposes, simply by saying really transgressive and shocking things all the time. And that’s almost impossible not to cover. And you do have to cover it to a certain extent, particularly when the person saying these things is the president of the United States,” Maddow told USA Today. “But you can’t ever lose sight of what that chaos is concealing, that the actions of the president, the actions of the administration are often much more consequential than whatever crazy thing he’s recently said that’s driven everybody in the news cycle to go write a million similar stories about it. So that ‘watch what they do, not what they say’ thing, I’m really trying to operationalize that.”
She added that we’re already seeing “the freneticism of the Trump news cycle taking over” during the transition.
“We’re seeing the unpredictable cadence of the way news breaks as opposed to a more competent rational administration,” Maddow said. “So we’ll see; we’re trying to be ready for anything, and that’s part of why we’re making this change for the first 100 days.”
The shift in schedule comes as MSNBC has seen its ratings decline significantly since Trump’s win in November.
But the network has said that it’s beginning to see an uptick in viewership, noting that Maddow’s Jan. 6 show brought in 1.62 million viewers, up 20% compared to November and December 2024 average.
It also noted that MSNBC’s primetime viewership on Jan. 7 was up 25% compared to the November and December averages and that MSNBC doubled its prior four-week audience average during the House Speaker vote on Jan. 3 — the most-watched daytime audience since election week. Additionally, it saw its largest weekend audience since the week before the election on Jan. 4 and 5 — up 15% versus the November and December average.
“This is something, as you say, that we see after every election. Whichever side wins or loses, you see people just want to opt out and have other parts of their life take up the space that absorbing the news and politics was previously taking up. It’s definitely understandable,” Maddow said. “To the extent that it is not just about the normal cycles of exhaustion and renewal of attention, we are entering a time when a lot of people are going to reengage. Everybody sort of implicitly knows that pretending something isn’t happening does not ensure that the thing doesn’t actually happen; there’s a sort of head-in-the-sand wish casting that’s happening with a lot of people checking out of the news, thinking ‘If I don’t hear about it, if I don’t look at it, then maybe it’s not happening.’ But people know that’s not actually the way to stop it from happening. If this shambolic transition is anything to go on, the second Trump term is going to affect a lot of Americans and they’re going to want to pay attention.”
When asked if she’d extend her five-night per week schedule after Wagner returns, Maddow admitted it’s a “hard stop.”
“When Rashida [Jones] asked me to do this, that was the discussion. That’s what Alex wants, too,” she said. “The thing about the 9 p.m. chair is that it’s really a full-time job and with what Alex is planning on doing — field reporting across the country and, I think, potentially overseas — and doing that while I’m holding the seat for her for 100 days, that’s a good horizon for us, but on April 30 we will go back to our existing schedule.”
Her comments come as the journalism industry has been grappling with cost-cutting and layoffs — and as her network will be spun-off into a separate, publicly traded entity along with CNBC, USA Network, MSNBC, Oxygen, E!, Syfy and Golf Channel, as well as digital assets Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and SportsEngine.
“I’m [more] concerned about the future of journalism, broadly. But as long as I have been in the cable news world, I’ve been told ‘this is the last year.’ And eventually, I’m sure it will be over,” she said. “But 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, and I know MSNBC is committed to that as a company, and none of that changes. “
While acknowledging that the business and political pressures are “very threatening” and “very anti-democratic,” she emphasized that “Americans broadly know that we need a free press.”
“We don’t need just state TV; we don’t need to have the government control the media, as happens in authoritarian countries. You want a free and independent and even oppositional press if you want a healthy country, and I think the country recognizes that. All of us in the business recognize that,” Maddow concluded. “And part of the way we’re going to fight for that is by trying to be as successful as we can and try to serve the needs of our audience as best as we can. That’s part of why this 100-day plan is smart. And I’m really energized and really excited about it.”
