Rachel Maddow was slammed by her former MSNBC mentor Keith Olbermann over her new contract, which cuts her pay to $25 million a year from $30 million.

Olbermann was in many ways Maddow’s predecessor, the liberal-leaning network’s biggest star for nearly a decade.

During that time, he platformed several of MSNBC’s current stars, including Maddow, who often guest hosted Olbermann’s old show ‘Countdown’ before being given her own program in 2008.

The ex-ESPN star has slammed the network several times in recent years, including Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski for meeting with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago weeks ago.

He has also been furious with Maddow, whom he says vetoed a potential return to the network by Olbermann.

The blowup over the Morning Joe hosts’ pivot plus owner Comcast’s desire to ‘spin-off’ the liberal network led one commentator to wonder if Maddow should start her own operation and bolt from MSNBC.

There appears to be no love lost between Olbermann and Maddow, as the ex-Fox Sports host gave a biting reply.

Olbermann wrote: ‘She just re-signed for $25m. If you think she’d do anything for principle, I’ll light a candle for you.’

Comcast looks set to ‘spin-off’ MSNBC amid radical changes which led Scarborough and Brzezinski to joke they could lose that very penthouse earlier this week.

The salaries for key talent appear set for cutbacks, mirroring rivals CNN, with Maddow signing a new deal that will slash her pay from $30 million annually to $25 million.

An anonymous executive called Maddow ‘ratings Viagra,’ regularly drawing significantly more viewers than the rest of the network’s primetime lineup.

An MSNBC spokesman dispute Maddow’s new reported salary and told DailyMail.com: ‘We wish Keith well’.

While its been reported that the network and Morning Joe’s ratings have suffered since the pair’s announcement they’d made peace with Trump weeks ago, the network fiercely pushed back on that.

Initial reports suggested Morning Joe lost viewers hour-to-hour after the hosts revealed their secret Mar-a-Lago meeting.

However, an MSNBC spokesperson told DailyMail.com live viewership actually went up 24% in the 7am hour, slightly higher than the 22% rise the show saw hour-to-hour the prior week.

Furthermore, the network claimed victory as that Monday, November 18 show saw a higher number of viewers check out the show on DVR, with over 400,000 people checking out the 6am hour later that day, a 77% rise, up from a year-to-date average of 27%.

They also said the show’s ratings in the entire week of the Mar-a-Lago meeting announcement only dipped 1.7% from the prior week. Both Fox and CNN either remained flat or declined in ratings that week.

MSNBC continues to boast that ‘more Americans tune to the first hour of Morning Joe than to any other’ program in its timeslot in 2024, particularly when viewers catch up on the program later in the day via DVR.

However, reports remain about changes coming to MSNBC. A source told The Ankler that the Morning Joe rebrand of making peace with Trump is part of the network having a come-to-Jesus moment going too far to the left during the election.

‘We were so Harris propaganda that when she lost, viewers were shocked. It turned into one giant circle jerk and echo chamber. If MSNBC wants to be of service to its viewers, they can’t keep them in fantasy land.’

However, keeping the liberal star Maddow for even one night a week on the air was non-negotiable.

‘No one else can do what she does. You can’t build a brand like it overnight.’

Comcast’s move to spin off its NBCUniversal networks would have been a staggering move years ago, with its fleet of channels previously among the company’s most profitable assets.

But the decision will see channels including MSNBC, USA, Oxygen, E!, and Golf Channel branched off onto a separate entity – and separate balance sheet.

Comcast executives said that they will not spin off all channels, and will keep Bravo, the Peacock streaming service and the NBC broadcast network under the parent company.

But by shedding its expensive networks, Comcast is hedging its bets that it can expand its movie studio and theme park industries without being dragged down by the struggles of traditional television news.

It also comes at a delicate time for the Morning Joe anchors after it was revealed that Joe and Mika visited Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago – after a years-long feud that reached a fever pitch when Scarborough likened him to Adolf Hitler – sparking fury among the liberal show’s viewers.

Amid the backlash, Morning Joe staffers have insisted the Florida meeting was ‘f***ing worth it.’

However, there are reports that star anchor Maddow is furious with her Morning Joe colleagues for meeting with Donald Trump after he won the presidential election.

Maddow, along with other hosts at the troubled liberal network, are calling this move by the married Morning Joe co-hosts ‘opportunistic,’ according to a report in The US Sun.

‘The meeting at Mar-a-Lago created a lot of tension in the teams, and many other stars…see both Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski as opportunistic and with very low self respect and forgetting their values of being journalists with independence and integrity,’ said a journalist who’s worked at MSNBC for 15 years.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the journalist made it clear who has a problem with Morning Joe pivoting from calling Trump a fascist and an admirer of Adolf Hitler to having a cordial meeting with him to figure out coverage going forward.

‘They have lost a lot of credibility. Rachel Maddow is pissed at them as are other presenters like Chris Hayes and Ari Melber. They are so frustrated,’ the journalist said.

‘It was such a stupid thing to do,’ they added. ‘They have bent the knee to ensure not being targeted by Trump and the whole MAGA world.’