After newly elected President Donald Trump’s decisive victory on November 5, media observers expected cable news networks to experience a “Trump Bump” ratings boost similar to what they enjoyed in 2016 after his improbable victory over Hillary Clinton.

But this time we’ve seen the opposite result: The Donald Drain.

At MSNBC, home to the most unhinged commentary and analysis we’ve ever seen in the history of television – and that’s saying something – more than half of the audience, 53%, are no longer listening, compared to the ratings of October.

“The Rachel Maddow Show,” for example, easily MSNBC’s highest-rated program even though it only airs once a week, drew just 1.3 million viewers on Nov. 10, five days after the election — a decline of 1 million viewers compared to the previous month.

In the key 25-to-54 demographic that advertisers crave most, Maddow’s number marked the smallest audience to see her show since April 2022.

For context, Sean Hannity’s Fox News program drew a total of more than 3.1 million viewers in the same time slot, or nearly triple Maddow’s that day. In the 25-54 demo, Hannity nearly quadrupled her audience, from 420,000 viewers to her paltry 109,000.

And here comes the really bad news for 30 Rock executives: Outside of Maddow, MSNBC has seen an unprecedented decline.

Example: On Tuesday, November 11, a week after the election, MSNBC achieved its lowest demo ratings of 25-54 in 23 years. On CNN, the demo figure was the lowest since June 27, 2000 – when Bill Clinton was president.

For the total week of November 6-13, Fox News averaged 2.23 million viewers, while MSNBC drew a paltry 557,000 and CNN only 399,000.

Fox News (where I serve as a contributor) even saw its viewership jump by 38% overall since November 5, after dominating election night by outpacing all networks and attracting more than 10 million viewers.

It’s so bad that MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski crawled into Mar-a-Lago on Friday to kiss Trump’s ring — drawing scorn for their utter shamelessness after years of on-air attacks.

The ratings underline how niche these left-wing networks have become. According to Pew Research, only 9% of CNN viewers and 3% of MSNBC audiences identify as Republican.

So why the sudden rejection from the viewer?

Perhaps they feel betrayed and misled after years of being told that Trump was Hitler, a fascist, a racist, a sexist xenophobe who had to be stopped or democracy would cease to exist.

Yet his actual victory showed that most of the country doesn’t believe it — not even President Biden, who welcomed Trump to the White House with a big smile last week.

These viewers were only exposed to polls showing the hapless Kamala Harris leading the key swing states. CNN, for example, had its 6 percentage point lead over Trump in Wisconsin, 5 points in Michigan and a tie in Pennsylvania in the final polls before Election Day.

She lost all three – and is more than 2.5 million votes behind in the popular vote.

Or maybe it’s just fatigue. This election cycle, with its assassination attempts, its Democratic coup and the historic return of a former president, has been the craziest anyone can remember. Maybe some people just need a break.

Maybe other CNN and MSNBC viewers are just too depressed about the outcome to tune in.

Will their anchors, anchors and analysts turn away from the continued opposition to Trump?

CNN gives one answer:

“We saw people today, our fellow reporters, crying and hugging in the hallways,” legal correspondent Paula Reid reported after Trump nominated Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general.

To wait. Why exactly would serious and objective reporters cry?

Did Walter Cronkite cry when Richard Nixon won twice? Did Tim Russert cry when George W. Bush won a nail-biter against Al Gore?

Meanwhile, Joy Reid at MSNBC is spewing her old post-election rhetoric.

“Don’t think because you have a green card and came the ‘right way’ – if you’re brown, you might not stick around,” Reid said on her Nov. 14 broadcast.

In other words, she claims that Trump will deport the people of the country legal. This is madness.

No: Until the culture and talent change at these networks — and, by extension, at outlets like The New York Times, which employs exactly zero pro-Trump columnists — there’s a good chance audiences will return, in a media landscape full of more options than ever before will continue to decline.

So expect it to get worse. CNN’s assessment “Trump slump” will lead to mass layoffs. MSNBC will likely be spun off from parent company Comcast as its value continues to decline.

And they have only themselves to blame.

Joe Concha is the author of “Progressively Worse: Why Today’s Democrats Ain’t Your Daddy’s Donkeys.”