It always starts the same way with Donald Trump: a half-formed grunt of a post, a cryptic one-word drop (“Bela”), and then the digital jackals descend. A follower serves up a meme, Trump slaps his digital stamp of approval on it, and suddenly we’re all trapped in the world’s saddest reboot of Mad Men, except instead of Don Draper delivering a pitch, it’s Grandpa screaming at a flat-screen because Nicolle Wallace got more laughs than he did.
By Sunday night, the President of the United States had escalated from cryptic ramblings to a full-scale meltdown at MSNBC’s Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace, whom he declared would be “FIRED SOON” while triumphantly proclaiming, “MSNBC IS DEAD!” as though he had just slain a dragon and not reposted a badly cropped meme.
This is the American presidency in 2025: an old man in Florida discovering new ways to lose arguments with women on cable news.
Trump vs. Media Women: A Long Tradition of Losing
Trump has a special relationship with women in media. He doesn’t simply feud with them—he becomes possessed. Megyn Kelly’s debate question in 2015 still echoes in his mind like a dental drill. Mika Brzezinski once made him so furious he fabricated a facelift story on Twitter, an act of projection so loud you could hear the Botox needles trembling at Mar-a-Lago. And now, Nicolle Wallace has joined the pantheon.
But Wallace isn’t just any anchor. She’s a former Republican operative, a George W. Bush communications aide who defected from the cult of conservatism and built a career skewering Trump with the insider’s precision of someone who once wrote the press releases he can barely read. For Trump, she’s the ultimate betrayal: the homegrown apostate who traded loyalty for lucidity.
So of course he called her ratings “low.” Of course he called MSNBC “DEAD.” This is Trump’s kink: imagining that by typing in caps, he resurrects Nielsen boxes from 2002 and rewrites network ledgers with sheer force of will.
Meanwhile, in Geopolitics: Putin Smiles, Trump Posts
Here’s the part that makes this circus not just pathetic but dangerous: Trump’s meltdown at Wallace came just hours after a summit with Vladimir Putin that produced, in diplomatic terms, “absolutely nothing.” No ceasefire. No deal. No roadmap. Just two aging strongmen standing side by side, grinning like regional sales managers at a convention who couldn’t close.
As Trump shouted about Wallace’s ratings, Putin shelled Kharkiv. As Trump re-posted memes, Zelenskyy scrambled for NATO-style guarantees in Washington. History will not note the “Bela” post. History will note the civilian death toll in Ukraine while the President of the United States decided his biggest enemy was a woman reading from a teleprompter.
But try telling that to his base. For them, the real war is against MSNBC. Russia is just a subplot.
“MSNBC IS DEAD!”—The Dirge of the Ratings-Obsessed
Let’s pause and appreciate the absurdity of declaring a network “dead” in 2025. MSNBC pulled 1.3 million viewers last Thursday. That’s fewer than a mid-level TikTok dance challenge but more than Trump’s Truth Social platform could dream of attracting. Declaring it “dead” is like declaring Pepsi “dead” because your country club switched to Coke.
Trump measures the world in ratings points and crowd sizes. Democracy, for him, is a Nielsen score. NATO is a focus group. Wars are episodes. And women who outwit him on television? They are canceled shows. Nicolle Wallace isn’t simply a critic in his mind; she’s a rival series running opposite his own reruns.
The irony is exquisite: the man who once starred in The Apprentice is now auditioning daily to be America’s least convincing TV critic.
The Memes That Move Nations
This latest spiral began with the “Bela” post. No one knows what it meant—was it short for “Bella,” an affectionate pet name for Melania (unlikely), or just another stray thought in a brain that produces non-sequiturs the way Florida produces humidity? A follower replied with a doctored meme of Nicolle Wallace. Trump reposted it.
This is policy now. The White House press pool no longer waits for formal statements; they scroll Truth Social like divorced parents scanning Facebook for clues about their teenager’s whereabouts. The meme economy has become foreign policy.
Think about it: Trump didn’t take questions with Putin. He didn’t clarify positions on NATO. But he did find time to repost an image mocking Nicolle Wallace. The world burns, but the feed must be fed.
Nicolle Wallace: The New Resistance Icon
Trump may think he buried Wallace with his “MSNBC IS DEAD!” epitaph, but in reality, he elevated her. Wallace has now joined the short list of Trump targets who become larger through his obsession. He thinks he diminishes women by mocking them, but he only transforms them into symbols of defiance.
Mika became the voice of “Morning Joe’s” anti-Trump crusade. Megyn parlayed his insults into a second act. Now Wallace will wear this feud like armor. The President of the United States fears her enough to scream her name in caps lock. What better endorsement could a journalist hope for?
The Broader Picture: America as Ratings War
Here’s the tragicomic arc: while Trump obsesses over Nicolle Wallace’s ratings, America’s problems mount. Inflation jitters return. Hurricanes intensify. Russia escalates. China circles Taiwan. And yet the leader of the free world spends his Sunday night fighting imaginary battles against cable anchors.
This is not a strategy. It’s a script. A reality-TV plotline recycled for the thousandth time. Trump only knows how to be the aggrieved star, the victim of low ratings, the man screaming into the void. His presidency isn’t a government—it’s a pilot season that never ends.
Why It Matters
Satire aside, there’s a chilling truth here: when Trump declares “MSNBC IS DEAD!,” he isn’t just joking. He’s priming his followers to see independent journalism as illegitimate. He’s nurturing the idea that only state-approved networks should survive. It’s the slow drip of authoritarianism, masked as petty entertainment.
He did it with “fake news.” He did it with “enemy of the people.” Now he does it with “dead.” Always the same arc: delegitimize, diminish, destroy.
The laughter his tantrums generate shouldn’t blind us to the stakes. The man who once asked Putin for “next time in Moscow” doesn’t simply want Nicolle Wallace fired. He wants her erased.
Closing Notes: The Last Laugh
And so Nicolle Wallace, by simply existing, by simply reading from her teleprompter and occasionally raising an eyebrow, has reduced the President of the United States to a keyboard warrior shrieking “MSNBC IS DEAD!” into the ether.
It is pathetic. It is funny. It is dangerous. It is America, 2025.
Because while Zelenskyy fights to preserve his country’s borders, Trump fights to preserve his ego against a woman in a blazer. While Putin calculates his next offensive, Trump calculates retweets. The world is on fire, and the leader of the free world is staring into a mirror, screaming about ratings.
History will remember the wars, the treaties, the lines redrawn on maps. But it will also remember this: the President of the United States once believed Nicolle Wallace was the greatest threat to his reign.
And the punchline? MSNBC is still very much alive. It’s Trump’s credibility that died years ago.