Gayle King may be riding high on the idea of being an “astronaut” in the wake of her 11-minute space tourism trip with Blue Origin last week, but her popularity appears to be at a low.
In the wake of her highly scrutinized zero-gravity adventure, ratings for her already struggling CBS News morning show have plummeted. And King is apparently not the only one experiencing the backlash.
On Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by Glenn Greenwald, host of Rumble’s System Update, to discuss the latest figures and why King and her fellow space travelers have invited so much criticism in the wake of their trip.
Ratings Crater
King co-hosts CBS Morning alongside Tony Dokoupil and Nate Burleson weekday mornings, as the Tiffany Network’s competitor to ABC News’ Good Morning America and NBC News’ Today. It perennially finds itself in third place in the ratings and the highly coveted 25- to 54-year-old demo, though that briefly changed last week.
The Monday before the Blue Origin flight, NewsNation found that CBS Morning had an impressive 3.9 million viewers with 593,000 in the demo. Much like King, however, the numbers quickly came back down to earth.
In the three days following the trip, NewsNation reported the ratings dropped to an average of 1.9 million people (a 51 percent loss) and the demo fell to 339,000 (a 43 percent loss). A week later, viewers in the demo fell even further to 311,000 for a third-place finish.
Bigger Backlash
It may have been hard to foresee just how much blowback this excursion would get from celebrities, late night hosts, and social media users alike, but an industry source told NewsNation it is hard to understand why King was allowed to participate to begin with.
“This stunt should have never been greenlit by CBS News to begin with,” the source said. “Gayle tries to be this relatable morning show anchor who claims she’s down to earth and then not only takes this gazillion-dollar flight but then attacks people for getting mad at her? It’s a complete crock.”
King has turned out to be one of the most outspoken members of the six-woman crew, claiming she is now “an astronaut” who followed in the footsteps of Alan Shepard (a.k.a. the first American in space) and accusing critics of sexism.
But she is not the only one facing repercussions. According to NewsNation, pop star Katy Perry is struggling to sell tickets to her upcoming “Lifetimes” tour despite holding up the setlist as she mugged for cameras in the spacecraft.
Megyn believes these women are caught off guard by the public reaction. “If you Google ‘Blue Origin space ride,’ every single thing that comes up is the backlash, and how angry people are about this, and how absurd they thought it was, and what a vanity play it was,” she noted. “Obviously, it had exactly the opposite effect of the one Gayle and the others thought it would.”
Reading the Room
In speaking so hyperbolically about the experience, Greenwald said King and co. have brought the backlash on themselves. “They are making themselves more and more ridiculous… You are talking about people chosen by the second richest man on the planet, who put his fiancée [Lauren Sánchez] along with Katy Perry on this flight. It was a cringe fest from start to finish,” he explained. “How do they think people in this country are going to react to that sort of thing?”
“They live in this world that is so detached from anything other than themselves that they just have lost the ability to understand how they are perceived by other people,” he continued. “And really one of the worst attributes you can possibly have if you are in the public arena is to just completely lose the ability to understand how others are perceiving you.”
Ultimately, Megyn said it is emblematic of a larger cultural and political issue today. “They are all Democrat leftists from the look of it… We know a few of them are, and so… they think everyone is going to celebrate them for bringing up their trauma, or their breasts, or their heroics… This is leftist thought,” she said. “It kind of gets to a bigger point of: Can the left get past this?”
That remains to be seen. “The Democrat Party is wrestling with this right now,” she concluded. “We over here are just looking at them wondering what their next move is because this sort of woke, very progressive cancer that they are dealing with is eating away at their own party.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Greenwald by tuning in to episode 1,056 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.