Viewership plummeted for MSNBC's "Morning Joe" broadcast after hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealed Monday that they had met with President-elect Donald Trump to "restart communications," according to Mediaite.
Nielsen data shows that viewing figures started to dip just 56 minutes after Scarborough and Brzezinski began to explain their trip to Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
Between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Monday, viewership had fallen 17% from 839,000 to 694,000. Among the 25- to 54-year-old age group, viewing figures plummeted 38%.
"Morning Joe," which airs for four hours each morning, regularly builds viewers hour over hour, according to Mediaite.
Scarborough and Brzezinski have been highly critical of Trump for years. They had maintained a cordial relationship with Trump during his 2016 run for president but later became some of his fiercest critics.
On Monday, they told viewers they had met with Trump for the first time in seven years and that it was time to take a new approach.
"For nearly 80 million Americans, election denialism, public trials, January 6th, were not as important as the issues that moved them to send Donald Trump back to the White House with their vote," Brzezinski said. "Joe and I realized it's time to do something different and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him."