Rachel Maddow is one of the best interviewers on television, and for her book tour, she went on The View and was questioned by Meghan McCain, who is, um, NOT one of the best interviewers on television.
October 4, 2019

It's almost painful to watch the great interviewer Rachel Maddow get interviewed by one of the worst interviewers on television, Meghan McCain. Observe how Meghan breaks an essential rule of interviewing, and makes her first question in this clip all about herself. (Points off for not mentioning "my father." )

MEGHAN MCCAIN: You know, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to ask you, and I was thinking about it last night, and I have the unique experience that I briefly worked at MSNBC and Fox News for much longer. I obviously work here now. [Aside to audience member] I don't know what that was. And I would like to say, it's interesting being in the underbelly of both places, and conservative media dominates liberal media across the board. In ratings, their viewers are more loyal. I know that you were friends with Roger Ailes.

RACHEL MADDOW: Mm-hmm.

Rachel Maddow is a genuinely kind person, to a fault. I would have interrupted and asked Meghan about her dinner last night, what she wore to bed, you know, really, put me in the SCENE where you were thinking about what you wanted to ask me, Meghan, because the way you paint your thought process, it's just so farking fascinating.

But I digress. What Meghan decided to ask Rachel Maddow after slurping her dinner in her pajamas and thinking about it and all her own unique experiences (getting fired from various networks) was...

Why does Rachel Maddow think conservative media, which is so popular and so awesome, CLEANS HER CLOCK in the ratings on a regular basis?

MCCAIN: What do you think was the key to conservative success and conservative brilliance in Fox News that they just lap you guys and still do? And that's your own verbage that you used one time on Bill Maher.

And Rachel Maddow did NOT say what I would have: "Why Meghan McCain, you little b***h."

Instead, Maddow took the question seriously and gave a careful analysis of media and audiences. Because she is a better person than I am, and a much better person than Meghan McCain.

MADDOW: There's no -- I don't think there's any shame in it. Listen. I was in talk radio before I was ever in TV, and you want to talk about conservative domination on talk radio.

MCCAIN: Yeah.

MADDOW: Part of it is the conservative media world has set itself up as 'you can only come to us. Don't believe anybody else. Everybody else is against you. We're the only people who will tell you anything that you need, and you should not read the paper and not trust any other sources of news.'

And when you lock in an audience of that, even if you don't have a majority of the country listening to you or watching you, you get them uniquely, and you get them all day long, and you get them passionately.

I don't think that's good for the country because I think you end up giving people a single stream news sort, and that's not great. In the rest of the media, we're bringing on people from different papers and I, you know, I cite Fox News reporting on my show and stuff like that. I'll take reporting from anywhere. Don't care.

JOY BEHAR: It seems they have a more simplistic point of view.

MADDOW: It's more of a political operation. That's what I learned in getting to know Mr. Ailes. It's not like we hung out or anything, but I talked to him about the business and he really approached the business as a political operative who was trying to get Republican talking points out and get the Republican Party to move to the right, and he was running that as a constant campaign. I'm telling you. The people running MSNBC are not running a constant political campaign. They're just running a TV network, and when you don't have that same ideological drive, I think you end up producing a different product. We're sort of doing two different things. I don't think that Mr. Hannity and myself are doing parallel shows. We're doing different projects.

Joy Behar then gave The View its regular Joy Behar reality check.

JOY BEHAR: They're in disarray now, so bravo.

MADDOW: Oh. No comment.

And Meghan and her agenda get the last word before going back on script.

MCCAIN: We're trying to get more conservatives here, across the board on all networks there should be more fusion. That's how we're so tribal at the moment, but we have to talk about your book, "Blowout."

Blowout is the Number One bestseller in Books on Amazon, currently.

You can watch more clips from Maddow's appearance on The View at the show's YouTube page.

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