When Donald J. Trump first starred on The Apprentice, over twenty years ago, the show was a surprise hit. The creative team managed to make its narcissistic, petty and cruel host likable.

The show’s creator, Mark Burnett, also made viewers forget that Donald J. Trump was the same man who had a slew of business failures throughout his career including six bankruptcies involving failed casinos and the Plaza Hotel.

Although The Apprentice managed to garner huge ratings when it first debuted it lost about 60% of its audience within two years. The creative team tried to revive the series by creating The Celebrity Apprentice which briefly gave it a boost that quickly dwindled.

Eventually things got so bad that producers cobbled together The Celebrity Apprentice All Stars where they brought back popular celebrity contestants in the hopes, they could revive the glory days of the first few seasons. It didn’t work.

Reality television is much cheaper to produce than other types of traditional programming which is one reason NBC may have kept the show running as long as it did.

Much like the final seasons of his reality show Trump seems to be in the death throes of his MAGA glory days. The ratings for Fox News, his personal propaganda network, have also taken a hit.

Although Fox News still dominates cable news its ratings are down 28% since the same time last year. In the past decade no other network besides Fox News has seen this big of a decline the month before the midterm elections.

Fox News is especially doing poorly with the demographic most coveted by advertisers viewers aged 25-54.

At this point it appears obvious that Fox News is trying to figure out a way to untangle itself from the MAGA cult without losing even more viewers.

The network almost seems to be holding its breath and bracing itself for what will likely be a disastrous outcome for the Republican Party in the midterm elections.