The Hammerstein Ballroom in midtown Manhattan hums with the sound of walkers, canes, and Medicare-approved stability sneakers shuffling on the brocade carpet. Several busloads worth of gray-haired radicals are milling about the historic auditorium. Some have shelled out thousands of dollars to be here for a chance to see their favorite MSNBC personalities denounce Donald Trump in person. Liquor drinks are extra. The exorbitantly priced bar opens at 10:30 a.m. We’re going to need it.
“MSNBC Live ’25: This Is Who We Are” is the failing left-wing network’s second live offering in as many years. Last year’s event was largely focused on how to stop Trump from winning the election and canceling democracy. This year’s summit is even more existential, if you can believe it. Two weeks after Trump’s decisive victory in 2024, MSNBC parent company Comcast announced it was cutting ties with the network. It will soon be required to ditch its NBC affiliation and rebrand as MS NOW (My Source for News, Opinion, and the World). The name change becomes official next month, but they’ve kept the old one so as not to confuse their elderly fans.
Other aspects of the event planning—spearheaded by Luke Russert, the boy-faced nepo baby—were less accommodating to a demographic that hates inconvenience and loves to complain. More than a few mobility-challenged attendees griped about having to walk down a flight of stairs to use the bathroom. Ushers were overheard discussing how to minimize injuries.
Russert takes the stage and starts to schmooze. He flatters the decaying audience with a polite euphemism about how MSNBC is “so fortunate to have an engaged audience” that “tunes in for long periods of time throughout the day.” That may be—nursing homes tend to leave the TV on while residents sleep—but the ratings are atrocious. In the third quarter of 2025, MSNBC averaged just 41,000 daytime viewers and 66,000 primetime viewers under the age of 55. That’s a decline of roughly 60 percent compared to 2024, when the ratings were already bad. The only demographic advertisers care about—viewers between the ages of 24-54—comprises less than 10 percent of the MSNBC audience.
Chris Hayes, one of several Rachel Maddow look-a-likes scheduled to appear, kicks things off by comparing Trump to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. He’s hopeful that American democracy will survive because Putin is “defter, smarter, and more effective” at tyrannical governance. Michael Steele, the disgraced former Republican, isn’t so sure. He predicts Trump will soon declare martial law to facilitate his efforts to abolish elections. The excitement of being able to wait in line to take a selfie with their favorite hosts hasn’t stopped attendees from noticing all the empty seats at the morning session.
The mood brightens when Nicolle Wallace takes the stage with Martin Sheen. The 85-year-old actor is beloved by his fellow liberal activists for portraying President Jed Bartlet in the West Wing, the annoying early 2000s drama about solving deep-seated political conflicts with witty banter and passionate monologues. Wallace says the show inspired her to go into politics. The fictional president says it’s about time Trump realized he was “the biggest nothing in the world” and embraced his humanity. “Oh my God, being human is all we need,” he explains.
Sheen’s wife Janet causes a minor stir during the segment when she commandeers a seat near the stage. A chorus of arthritic groans ring out when an event staffer orders them to scoot over and make room for the Hollywood spouse.
When the morning session ends, VIP ticket holders who shelled out $900 or more are invited to attend the Capstone Lunch with Chris Hayes, Mika Brzezinski, and Hillary Clinton’s former servant Huma Abedin. The price of tickets was a sore subject on the MSNBC “news junkies” Facebook page. Angry fans disputed the network’s claim that tickets were as low as $100, when the cheapest nosebleed seats they could find were several times that amount. “Prices are ridiculously high and only people with money can afford,” one user wrote in August. Another vented that MSNBC was “soaking every dollar they can out of us.”
Meanwhile, lunch attendees were greeted with mimosas and treated to a sumptuous three-course meal, starting with a citrus arugula salad with honey-lemon vinaigrette and finishing with “Berrie [sic] Brulee Sabayon” with whipped cream and sugar glaze. It was so nice to enjoy a fancy meal without the riffraff. All the VIPs were eager to denounce Trump’s assault on the common man.
Almost none of these Capstone diners would be included in the advertiser-friendly age demographic (24-54) MSNBC is struggling to attract. Most were alive during the Vietnam War and Watergate; their memories of the era quickly become the focus of conversation. Brzezinski and Abedin give a presentation urging working-age women, of whom there are very few in attendance, to “know your value.” They also discuss their support for Vontelle Eyewear, a company that “makes glasses for African American women.”
The afternoon session kicks off with MSNBC host Ari Melber and Maya Wiley, the senior vice president for social justice at the New School and failed candidate for New York City mayor. A 56-year-old music producer named DJ Stretch Armstrong is also there for some reason. Wiley urges the crowd to “stay woke, stay woke, stay engaged,” while Melber almost bursts into tears while quoting Kendrick Lamar’s verse on the Kamala Harris campaign anthem “Freedom” by Beyoncé. Moments before they took the stage, we overheard an elderly Indian woman musing that this is what it must have felt like to be in Gandhi’s presence. “I feel like I’m standing on the edge of change,” she said.
We all do.
Jen Psaki, the former Biden spokesman who became an unofficial Democratic spokesman as host of a poorly rated show on MSNBC, treats us to a live episode of her podcast. She’s joined by Jennifer Welch and Angie “Pumps” Sullivan, former Bravo reality stars who co-host a podcast about being sassy and hating conservatives. They’re relatively young—late 40s, early 50s—so most people in the audience have never heard of them. The first of several cracks about Trump’s “cankles” is enough to win them over. By the time Welch delivers her rant about “failed drag queen” J.D. Vance, the crowd is cackling like Kamala.
Psaki tries to get the sassy women to say something uplifting about winning back middle America and getting along with people who don’t think Trump is literally Hitler, but they’re more interested in bashing half the country. There’s no point in trying, the ladies said, because of all the “patriarchy.” Most women just do what their husbands tell them to “as long as they get a new handbag.” Sullivan says she refuses to engage with conservatives, including her own mother. She just tells them it “makes me sad you can’t have empathy for poor people” and asks them if Jesus would be a MAGA supporter.
Rachel Maddow tells one truth and two lies after taking the stage to a huge ovation. She calls MSNBC a “really special” place because the hosts are “making a lot of money and having a big audience and growing, and at no risk of becoming state TV.” Maddow is right about the money. She gets paid $25 million to work one night a week and make boring documentaries about Russia. It’s certainly not accurate to describe MSNBC’s audience as huge or growing. And while no one would describe the network as “state TV” during a Republican administration, MSNBC’s fawning coverage of Barack Obama and their vigorous defense of Joe Biden’s mental sharpness is another story.
It’s a little hard to concentrate at this point. We can’t stop thinking about the Capstone Dinner where—for the embarrassingly low cost of $1,100—an even more exclusive group of VIPs will get to dine on braised short rib and miso glazed salmon while listening to Maddow and Psaki explain why “empathy is a superpower.”
Taking the lesson to heart, we almost feel bad for everyone involved, especially those who were too poor to attend. It’s clear that MSNBC provides some much-needed therapy for mentally distressed senior citizens. They’re going to miss it when it’s gone.
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