Cable news ratings; Ari Melber's on a roll; Tucker Carlson walks back his Trump hate

Ari Melber earned big ratings on Monday night after anchoring an impressive three hours of MSNBC programming during a big week in legal news concerning a certain former president.
The host placed second on the network with 1.97 million at 6 p.m., only falling behind ratings titan Rachel Maddow, who brought in 2.537 million total viewers at 9 p.m.
Melber even managed to beat out Fox News' Neil Cavuto at 4 p.m. The MSNBC host easily beat out CNN's Jake Tapper, for the first two hours of his stretch, as Tapper earned 569,000 total viewers at 4 p.m. and 591,000 at 5 p.m. compared to Melber's 1.7 million.
Not only did Melber earn solid numbers on Monday night, but he also showed off his reporting skills during an exceptional interview with Drew Findling, an attorney for Donald Trump.
Melber grilled the lawyer about Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, airing a clip of the former president pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the necessary number of votes to put him ahead of now-President Joe Biden.
The host then questioned how Trump's actions could be considered legal, later asking Findling to concede Trump lost Georgia. An all-around great week for Melber.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson shamelessly walked back his private feelings about Donald Trump — taking pains to assure the former president's most fervent supporters that he counts himself among the faithful.
On Monday, conservative radio host Bo Snerdley asked Carlson about his thoughts on Trump, after alluding to texts discovered in the ongoing Fox News-Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit in which Carlson said he hated Trump "passionately."
Carlson painted a rosier picture of Trump during his conversation with Snerdley, despite the fact that his disdain for the former president is now evident to anyone who can read.
While Carlson took pains to explain away his private comments, it has long been known that Carlson does not like Trump (when the cameras are off).
Last August, New York Times correspondent Jeremy Peters reported that Carlson’s private commentary “is very different that what he says about Trump in public.”

"I love Trump," Carlson told Snerdley, before explaining away his texts as being the consequence of false information about the 2020 election fed to him by a Trump staffer.

While Carlson claimed the incident left him "humiliated," he almost immediately doubled down on 2020 election denialism in that same interview. Carlson has continued to pretend the election was not fair on his Fox News show.