Was Rachel Maddow crying on air over Elon Musk’s temptation meme?

There’s a video circulating online of MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow crying over a supposed meme suggesting Tesla CEO Elon Musk is buying the network. The clip, which has been viewed tens of thousands of times, features a dewy-eyed Maddow unable to control herself over the supposed news. Is it real?

For context, Musk is a notorious troll on X, a site he bought in Oct. of 2022 for $44 billion. As of last month, the site was reportedly worth $9.4 billion. Whatever that makes you think of Musk as a businessman, he’s been disparaging MSNBC while talking about purchasing it.

He’s called MSNBC “the utter scum of the Earth,” and has gone on record saying that it “peddles puerile propaganda.” Embarrassing faux-intellectual alliteration aside, Musk is the richest man in the world so it’s definitely something that could happen.

This was enough to whip the Musk sycophants into action, with one meme about a priest trying to resist the temptation of a scantily clad woman used to illustrate Musk’s potential purchase.

In the video, Maddow struggles to hold her composure as the meme flashes on the screen. The banner at the bottom of the screen reads, “Elon Musk posts dangerous meme.” She pauses several times before signing off the air in obvious distress. Here’s the thing: that happened! Only it didn’t happen the way the video makes it seem, and the banner is photoshopped.

What actually happened?

The doctored clip making its round among alt-right corners of the internet is actually from 2018 when Maddow broke down following a report showing migrant children being separated from their parents and placed into shelters on their own. The real clip can be seen above.

X has a game-changing feature on the site called Community Notes, where users can add context to tweets. In this case, the disparity between the actual video and the current circumstances was clearly laid out. Additionally, while many Musk-ophites are seemingly salivating over the potential purchase of MSNBC, there has been no evidence that parent company Comcast has any desire to put the liberal-leaning mecca on the market.

Comcast chief Brian Roberts actually has other plans for the network. He’s in the process of moving MSNBC and a few other cable channels into a programming company called “SpinCo.” SpinCo will also have CNBC, USA Network, Oxygen, E!, Syfy, and Golf Channel.

Ah, but what are facts in the face of a lightning-quick news cycle? What is the truth when fiction is much more entertaining? For example, Joe Rogan commented on the supposed purchase, saying that he not only wants Maddow’s job when Musk buys the network, but he “will wear the same outfit and glasses.” That’s not all. He claims he will also “tell the same lies.”

The Rachel Maddow Show is safe for the time being. The Monday show recently renewed its contract, demonstrating its staying power. It did experience a dip in viewership in the wake of Trump’s election win, but the same thing happened in 2016 after Trump beat out Hillary Clinton, the cause of which is likely political exhaustion from the losing party. Fox, on the other hand, saw a rise in viewership post-2024 election, likely due to a fan base emboldened by their party’s win; in 2020 the network’s numbers dipped after Trump’s loss to Biden, partially due to Fox’s ongoing claims of election fraud, which ultimately led the network having to pay $1.6 billion in the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network defamation lawsuit, and saw its journalistic credibility tank.