On Monday, MS NOW celebrated their 30th anniversary with a new ad that played at the end of Morning Joe. The 15-second advertisement celebrated the network’s so-called “journalism” that supposedly “strengthens our democracy.”  Notably, amid changes to the network programming, the promotion heavily featured the nighttime duo of Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow, two hosts who have showcased some unhinged moments in the age of Trump and whose programming was anything but impartial. Broken up with short soundbites from O’Donnell and Maddow, the advertisement’s narrator read: Celebrating 30 years… Delivering journalism that informs, empowers, and strengthens our democracy.   MS NOW has a new ad celebrating its 30th anniversary: “Celebrating 30 years ... Delivering journalism that informs, empowers, and strengthens our democracy." pic.twitter.com/V3m8ptDFor — Nick (@nspin310) July 13, 2026   The 30th anniversary also came after their high-profile divorce from NBC and rebranding to MS NOW under new Versant management. But, without its old name of MSNBC, the cable channel still had not proven itself a top source of journalism that “strengthens our democracy” more than it was a place to hype many of the top liberal fears. Some of the hard-hitting journalism MS NOW would celebrate during this anniversary might come from The Last Word host Lawrence O’Donnell, who earlier this year said that the U.S. military under Trump was like Hitler’s army in World War II.  O’Donnell also had an obsession with Barron Trump at the start of the Iran War, as he implored Barron to enlist in the military or to traverse the Strait of Hormuz. More recently, O’Donnell said on air that he wanted a guest to “get personal” about Trump. The other main featured soundbite came from Maddow, who now only hosts a show on Monday nights, but still has enough time for “journalism” to constantly attack Trump and implore her viewers to attend protests, as she did just last month as she compared anti-Trump protestors to D-Day troops. Maddow has also feared, along with O’Donnell and many other MS NOW programs, a newfound, dubious stolen midterm election conspiracy. In the middle of June, during a Maddow-O’Donnell show handoff, the pair fearmongered “about Vance using ICE to rig the elections.” Other MS NOW hosts featured with brief images in the anniversary commercial have also not showcased the journalism they claimed to harbor. This was especially true with the featured hosts of Morning Joe, who spent last week with multiple defenses of Graham Platner, as Mika Brzezinski seemed unimpressed with a Politico report on rape allegations against Platner. If the network were dominated by the likes of partisans like O’Donnell, Maddow, and the Morning Joe crew as the ad suggested, their “journalism” might not strengthen democracy amid their partisan fearmongering. And that was just for the last year, not the 29 years of MSNBC prior.