Rachel Maddow may have had to endure some mocking from Twitter and Stephen Colbert, but her Tuesday Trump taxes exclusive delivered massive ratings for her already red-hot MSNBC show. Per just-released Nielsen data, Tuesday’s The Rachel Maddow Show was seen by 4.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched show on cable for the night and beating first-run scripted programming on ABC and Fox during the 9 p.m. hour. Tune in for the Twitter-touted episode was more than 30 percent above Maddow’s already-inflated recent audience levels, and MSNBC confirmed it was the most-watched regularly scheduled episode of the show ever. Even more impressive: Maddow drew younger viewers to cable news. Tuesday’s show notched a 1.0 rating among adults under 50, more than doubling her usual demographic skew and tripling the demo rating for usual cable news leader The O’Reilly Factor (0.32). Not immediately known: Whether Maddow lost many viewers in the second half of her hour-long show, once she revealed Trump’s taxes. But even if the audience shrank, it remained substantial: The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, which airs right after Maddow, notched a much bigger than usual — 2.7 million from 10 to 11 p.m.
