MSNBC’s struggles during Donald Trump’s second term—its total viewership is down by about 15 percent compared to a year ago—stem from some familiar problems, including cord-cutting, the bane of all cable outfits. They can also be traced to unique missteps, such as the decision to send the hosts of the network’s flagship Morning Joe program to visit Trump’s Mar-a-Lago clubhouse shortly after his 2024 victory to cozy up to a man they had spent much of the year decrying as a fascist—a decision that rightfully attracted the ire of Morning Joe viewers. But now the network is facing something it never has before: competition.
Younger viewers aren’t tuning into cable—they’re logging on to streaming platforms. Piker now commands over 35,000 average concurrent viewers on Twitch, while The Young Turks’ viewership rose by 26 percent on YouTube and 135 percent on Facebook. The Majority Report has seen its viewership rise by 18 percent on YouTube from last year and has seen a 48 percent increase in its subscribers. By contrast, MSNBC had an average of 57,000 viewers in the 25–54 age demographic during the second quarter of 2025.
The online leftist video space is the latest permutation of an alternative-media movement that began during George W. Bush’s first administration as an attempt to counter the influence of Fox News and right-wing talk radio. One of the central voices in that space has been attorney Cenk Uygur, who founded The Young Turks Network in 2002, alongside fellow progressives Ben Mankiewicz and Dave Koller, and who continues to co-host The Young Turks alongside Ana Kasparian. TYT and its flagship program went through a variety of phases, at one point airing on Al Gore’s Current TV. Today, it exists as a largely advertiser- and user-supported livestreaming platform. (Uygur also had a brief stint at MSNBC in 2010 and never misses an opportunity to bash his former employers. “They are pure propaganda for corporate establishment Democrats,” he said, “which are indistinguishable from corporate establishment Republicans.”)
Around this time, a number of other key players began entering the picture, including Uygur’s nephew Hasan Piker, who started interning at TYT while attending Rutgers and eventually began hosting The Breakdown, a short-form Facebook video show that premiered in 2016.Two years later, he began hosting marathon streams on Twitch, a platform mostly used by gamers; he left TYT in 2020 to go solo. The tall, handsome, and charismatic Piker was quickly termed a “woke bae” by BuzzFeed as he built an audience by livestreaming every day, often for eight hours or more. He’s been profiled by The New York Times and appeared on The Daily Show and is held up by some as the left’s answer to Joe Rogan: a broadcaster who can reach young men more interested in video games than politics.
While right-wing YouTube shows basically repeat Republican talking points, the left-wing shows tend to push for policies that are seen as political liabilities by much of the Democratic establishment, such as wealth taxes and Medicare for All. “My worldview is not aligned with Hakeem Jeffries,” Piker observed, whereas Ben Shapiro, “on any given day, is basically saying the exact same things that Ted Cruz is saying.”
Another newly prominent figure who emerged during the year of Trump’s victory is Vigeland, the co-host of The Majority Report. She has a palpable, openhearted sincerity and a good-natured sense of humor that offers a much-needed ballast to a combative, all-elbows movement.
If the progressive YouTube space is seen as being hostile to the mainstream Democratic Party, Vigeland has recently made an effort to broker peace. She has lately been appearing on “different shows that are broadly on the side of the left to bring folks together and bridge that everlasting 2016 divide between more progressive Bernie-associated people and more traditional Democratic Party voter stalwarts.” Uygur has also been doing some outreach, although it’s proved to be far more controversial. Last December, he appeared at the conservative group Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference in Phoenix, where he talked with right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk, high-fiving him near the end. “I got the crowd to boo Dick Cheney and Mitch McConnell. We disagreed in parts. We agreed in parts. We talked about how private equity is driving up home prices and how Wall Street should be banished from buying residential property,” he told me. “We still have massive disagreements with the right, but shocking agreements were breaking out.”
Uygur has come under particular fire by Vigeland and many others in progressive new media for suggesting that Democrats are suffering electorally by emphasizing trans rights, inclusive language, and particularly the trans athlete debate, a move that is seen by his critics as the starting point toward a slippery slope that ends with throwing a vulnerable group of people under the bus. “I believe in trans rights past the point of popularity, to be honest,” he said, pushing back on this claim and noting that he supports trans kids in sports through high school and has long advocated for trans people to use the bathroom of their choice. He asked Kirk if trans people should have constitutional protection against discrimination. For Uygur, his actual differences with his critics are “microscopic.”
Piker, acknowledging that “leftist infighting is the number one thing that people love doing,” had a polite but spirited debate over all this and more with his uncle during an annual Thanksgiving livestream dubbed “Cenkgiving.” While he’s quick to say, “I love my uncle,” Piker also acknowledged that they “argue all the time and debate all the time publicly, too.” According to Piker, they fundamentally disagree about criminal justice reform; Uygur thinks the left acts as if “crime doesn’t exist,” whereas Piker recognizes the United States as “a very reactionary, very draconian carceral state.” They also disagree about whether MAGA is a true populist uprising against the elites or just a grievance-driven personality cult. “I think it’s just hokum,” Piker told me, laughing at the idea of “maga communists.”
One thing everyone seems to agree on is that this is a huge moment for progressives—and the YouTubers and Twitch streamers they increasingly flock to. “The only reason we haven’t won before is because of the media ecosystem, and I’m optimistic because mainstream media has been defeated,” Uygur said. “Our side is the most popular side and the most authentic side, and the one that can’t wait to fight for the voters and deliver for the voters. So good luck to everyone else. We’re going to win.”
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