'Rachel Maddow Show' Hits All-Time High With Lev Parnas Interview

[RockaFowler]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/rachel-maddow-show-draws-biggest-audience-ever-lev-parnas-1270584?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=THR%20TV%20News%20%26%20Ratings_now_2020-01-16%2016:19:46_rporter&utm_term=hollywoodreporter_dailyratings

The MSNBC show was the most-watched program on cable Wednesday and beat a number of broadcast shows as well.


MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show drew its largest audience ever Wednesday night.

Maddow's interview with Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, a figure in the impeachment of President Donald Trump, averaged 4.47 million viewers, the program's largest audience in its 11-year history. It surpasses the 4.13 million who tuned in to a March 2017 edition on which Maddow revealed a small portion of Trump's 2005 tax return.

The show was the most-watched program on cable Wednesday night by a decent margin and beat the 9 p.m. averages for broadcasters ABC and Fox, as well. The Rachel Maddow Show scored its biggest margin of victory over Fox News' Hannity (3.79 million) in months. MSNBC also had more than four times as many viewers as CNN's Cuomo Prime Time in the hour (1.06 million).

I wonder how it did last night!!

[Zoonart]

1. Go Rachel!

Love you Doc!

[Timmygoat]

2. I wonder

When the rethugs will start saying they do not know who Guilliani is?

[randr]

3. People are paying attention, this is great news

[Laura PourMeADrink]

4. Thought Anderson Cooper did well with Parnas too.

But his show didn't seemed hyped/advertised as much?

Between the two, maybe I missed it, did either ask Parnas why Zelensky et al were dragging their feet on announcing an investigation? Never have understood that. If Ukraine was so anxious to please US, wouldn't it be a no brainer just to say, sure we are looking into it?

[DanieRains]

5. He Was Warned About Getting Involved In Our Elections

Someone said in testimony.

[mopinko]

6. that's what parnas said, too.

that they play us, and he should be careful.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

7. Zelensky was warned? By whom?

[ancianita]

9. There are probably more than just Chris Murphy.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chris-murphy-face-the-nation-says-he-warned-ukraines-president-not-to-interfere-in-u-s-election/

[Laura PourMeADrink]

15. But this warning was early September. After trump

was pressuring Zelensky.

[ancianita]

16. Well, I'm not sure what you mean. Why is it important?

Do you want to know the timeline of warnings?
Chris Murphy says he warned Zelensky in early September, after the "perfect call."

If you want to know who'd warn him before the July phone call, a timeline shows more than one warning from more than one source in an official capacity.

What I've learned is that any warning before the "perfect call" requires accepting the likelihood that a smart president like Zelensky would feel warned without anyone explicitly warning him to his face before Chris Murphy. But the warnings existed, and an official phone call made his position clear.

Before the warnings, and for the record, people from the Trump admin are talking all around Zelensky, who's busy running a country, until the date of the first warning.

-- July 10, 2019: During a meeting at the White House between American and Ukrainian national security officials, Sondland states that Ukraine’s president would get his desired meeting with Trump if Ukraine pursued the White House’s desired investigations. John Bolton cuts the meeting short and later instructs NSC deputies to communicate his displeasure to White House lawyers: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” he reportedly says. This meeting has been described by multiple first- and second-hand sources.

Zelensky had to be warned by that.

Next,

-- Mid-July 2019: Per the Washington Post, Trump tells acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to hold back from releasing nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine at least a week before a scheduled call with Ukrainian President Zelensky.

The following meetups are what Zelensky might not know of ...

-- July 18, 2019: Volker learns of the freeze. In later meetings on July 23 and 26, OMB officials explicitly say the instruction comes directly from the President.

July 19, 2019: Volker has breakfast with Giuliani and Lev Parnas, who is serving as a middleman in Giuliani’s Ukraine efforts. Volker pushes back on the conspiracy theories about Biden and 2016 that Giuliani has been floating, according to Volker’s testimony.

Zelensky formally states his position about the "drug deal":

July 20, 2019: Danyliuk, the Ukrainian national security secretary, tells Taylor in a call that Zelensky does not want to be used as a pawn in a U.S. re-election campaign.

July 21, 2019: In the text thread with Volker and Sondland, Taylor raises Zelensky’s concern “about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic, reelection politics.”

So it looks to me as if there are at least two formal warnings to Zelensky before the "perfect call."

[Laura PourMeADrink]

17. Wow..thanks so much for pulling that together!

I have to read and absorb all this - suspect Rudy on top of this way sooner than thought. And there's the Manafort connection. And if he was, trump was. Perhaps Zelensky knew this even before he was elected and had formed an opinion that trump et al were corrupt. Would explain his resistance to capitulate.

It is all extremely complex and takes diligence..lots if Ukrainian names in saga sound the same.

Here's a timeline you may have seen that starts WAY back

https://www.justsecurity.org/66271/timeline-trump-giuliani-bidens-and-ukrainegate/

[ancianita]

18. Thanks. I appreciate Ukraine's political past, but right now I borrow from Josh Marshall's TPM.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

19. TPM: "Yup, Trump Was Pressuring Ukraine Way Before Notorious Phone Call"

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/yup-trump-was-pressuring-ukraine-way-before-notorious-phone-call

Suggestions that the Poroshenko administration tried to deliver on political points that were beneficial to Trump also extend to the country’s faltering cooperation with the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.

In April 2018, Lutsenko reportedly froze the country’s investigations into Manafort and halted any pending cooperation that it had with the Mueller investigation. That took place just as the Trump administration followed through on a key piece of security assistance: the delivery of sought-after Javelin anti-tank missile systems, a crucial piece of lethal security assistance for the country in its search to beef up its defenses against the Russian army.

Some efforts appear to have come from the Ukrainian side to sweeten the political environment in which Kyiv was operating. The Poroshenko government signed a lucrative deal to buy locomotives from General Electric in 2017, for example. And in July 2017, Poroshenko arranged a deal whereby a state-owned Ukrainian company would buy Pennsylvania anthracite coal at above-market rates.

That deal “was done for political reasons,” according to Oleksandr Paraschiy, a Kyiv investment banker.

[PatSeg]

8. I was wondering about the ratings

That makes sense and well deserved.

[Gothmog]

10. Yeah for Rachel

[Laura PourMeADrink]

11. Just read an alternative view. That because Rachel

Has such a liberal rep, very few if any on right watch. It allowed Fox to just blow it all off and just say he was a felon. More effective would have been if someone like Chris Wallace had done interview.

No flaming...just another point of view!

[Bev54]

12. There you go Cuomo

Keep putting on Kellyanne and say goodbye to us all. Somebody needs to slap the sides of the heads of the executives at CNN. They seem to be confused.

[Midnight Writer]

13. A return to Must See TV. I timed supper last night so I could sit in front of the TV to eat.

[Rhiannon12866]

14. Not surprising!

This is clearly the news story of the day and Rachel's got it!