Donald Trump’s never-ending White House woes continue to be good news for The Rachel Maddow Show. With the president mired in shithole-gate, MSNBC’s signature show last week scored its best ratings ever, attracting an average audience of 3.172 million viewers for its initial 9 p.m. ET live telecast. Maddow beat its main Fox News rival Hannity (2.8 million) by nearly 400,000 viewers while tripling the tune-in for CNN’s limited-edition Chris Cuomo hour. She also easily bested both programs in the key cable-news demo of adults under 55 and marked her second consecutive week as the No. 1 show in all of cable news in said demo.
It was a good week for MSNBC overall, too. Boosted by Maddow, the NBC-owned network’s progressive-leaning prime-time lineup beat both Fox News and CNN among all viewers and the demo last week. This latest ratings victory expands a Maddow-MSNBC hot streak that began right around the time Trump took office last January, and heated up over the summer as the Russia investigation got more serious.