In November 2025, the cable news giant MSNBC officially rebranded itself as MS NOW. The corporate facelift has done little to quiet its critics in the podcast world, who are actively dissecting the network's editorial boundaries and ideological blind spots.
On The Megyn Kelly Show, political commentator Bill Maher took direct aim at the network's booking strategy, pointing out that independent Black intellectuals like John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, and Thomas Sowell are locked out of the network's mainstream discourse. Maher lamented that "they're not, and they're not invited on MSNBC," leaving the channel's audience with a highly curated, non-adversarial perspective on racial politics.
Meanwhile, the network's political posture is drawing criticism from center-right commentators who believe the channel has lost its edge. On The Bulwark Podcast, host Charlie Sykes argued that the network—which he referred to by its new "MS" moniker—and mainstream Democrats are failing to effectively counter Donald Trump because they are too timid to deploy mockery. Sykes remarked that "you can kinda tell it's in their internal, you know, monologue. The, like, they don't wanna mock him," leaving them flat-footed in the current media ecosystem.
As MS NOW attempts to establish its new identity, the network faces a fundamental choice: continue protecting its internal monologue, or open up its airwaves to the independent voices and aggressive rhetorical strategies that its critics argue are sorely missing.