In a notion that is sure to torment its liberal journalists, billionaire MAGA darling Elon Musk is flirting with the idea of buying MSNBC.
The network has been spun off by owner Comcast in the latest sign of trouble after a dire year of plunging ratings and hysterical performances from anchors.
While it’s not for sale, there’s been widespread speculation that it could change ownership.
The blood in the water at MSNBC set Donald Trump Jr’s tongue wagging on Friday. He joked on X: ‘Hey Elon Musk… I have the funniest idea ever!’
He was responding to a post that incorrectly claimed the network is already for sale.
Musk, who launched a hostile takeover for Twitter and won, took the bait.
‘How much?’ he replied in his own post.
While the pair may have been joking, this was the same question he asked in 2017 when a Twitter user urged him to buy the site.
Four years later he purchased the platform for $44billion and rebranded it ‘X’.
It comes as Comcast is spinning off into a new company many of the cable television networks that were once at the entertainment giant’s heart as consumers increasingly swap out their cable TV subscriptions for streaming platforms.
Comcast’s move to spin off its NBCUniversal networks would have been a staggering move just years ago, with its fleet of channels previously among the company’s most profitable assets.
But the decision will see channels including MSNBC, USA, Oxygen, E!, and Golf Channel branched off onto a separate entity – and placed on a separate balance sheet.
Comcast executives said that they will not spin off all channels, and will keep Bravo, the Peacock streaming service and the NBC broadcast network under the parent company.
Morning Joe has long been one of MSNBC’s most successful shows, but it has suffered massive ratings losses this week after its hosts revealed they met with president Trump, who they had deemed a fascist during the election cycle.
Their average audience is down 20 percent from Monday to Wednesday – and down a whopping 45 percent in the 25-54 demographic, to just 49,000 viewers.
But by shedding its expensive networks, Comcast is hedging its bets that it can expand its movie studio and theme park industries without being dragged down by the struggles of traditional television news.
According to the WSJ’s reporting, which broke the story, the new cable venture will have an ‘ownership structure that mirrors Comcast’s’, but ‘would likely need greater scale to thrive.’
This appeared to be on the minds of Morning Joe’s panel on Wednesday, as the hosts poked fun at the move while clearly understanding it may drastically alter MSNBC.
As he tried to downplay the move, Joe Scarborough said his show ‘could all be fired a year from now’, to which Mika Brzezinski chimed in: ‘Or tomorrow.’