MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow lost a whopping 20 percent of her audience after the release of the Mueller Report proved she shamelessly deceived her audience for more than two years.

The release of this report — you know, the one that exonerates President Trump of any and all allegations of Russia collusion, is, arguably, the biggest news of the last two years — and in the heat of this massive news cycle that lands directly in Maddow’s sweet spot, a huge chunk of her audience just up and disappeared.

For two years a cloud of illegitimacy hung over the Trump presidency and for two years the establishment media, most especially MSNBC and CNN, maniacally fire hosed the American people with fake news to smear the president as a Russian spy. But of all those guilty of spreading this dishonest hysteria, no one came close to Rachel Maddow.

Night after relentless night, over two-plus years, Maddow kept her suckers on the hook by weaving from whole cloth a conspiracy tale about Trump being owned by Putin. And with this tale came the promise that Trump’s removal from office was always right around the corner, and that Robert Mueller would be the deliverer — the angel who would end the nightmare of a terrible national mistake known as the Trump presidency.

Because this hysteria was everywhere (except in the conservative media that got everything right), there was no way to warn Maddow’s suckers that they were in fact suckers, that like a cult leader promising the end of the world, she was hustling them, lying to them, and enriching herself in the process to the tune of about $10 million a year.

Maybe now, though, the Cult of Maddow is cracking. I doubt it, but there is some hope in the latest numbers…

On Monday March 18, four days before the Mueller Report proved her a liar, 2.977 million people tuned in to Maddow’s carnival bark.

This past Monday, the 25th, three days after the Mueller Report proved her a liar, only 2.513 million tuned in, a loss of nearly 500,000 viewers.

Lawrence O’Donnell — whose show immediately follows Maddow and who is almost as obsessed with deceiving his audience about those damn, dirty Reds — took a similar hit: a drop from 2.2 million to 1.845 million.

In my decade or so of media coverage, MSNBC has rarely pinged my radar. Who cares about an openly left-wing outlet being openly left-wing? If CNN would stop its laughable pose as objective, that fake news network would probably never hear from me again.

This thing with Maddow, though, is bigger because she’s a snake oil saleswoman, a bunco artist, a grifter selling vials of hope filled with lies. For years, and only as a means to stay in the ratings fight with Sean Hannity, Maddow deliberately played millions and millions of people for suckers, for rubes… She hustled them, lied to them, deceived and hoaxed them in the most cynical way imaginable.

Mueller’s got the goods, she promised, and Trump will be marched in cuffs out of the Oval Office, and you must tune in every single night or you will miss The Most Important Development Yet.

And it was all bullshit, a con, a fever swamp of desperate dot-connecting backed by maniacal talking heads and unhinged “experts” screaming about treason! and indictments! and bombshells! and walls closing in!

So is it possible, dare we dream The Truth has set as much as 20 percent of Maddow’s gullible viewers free?

Or is this just more denial and avoidance by the Cult of Rachel. The Daily Beast (that first reported Maddow’s ratings dive) describes it this way: “[I]t’s also possible that the Mueller disappointment drove loyal viewers away in much the same way that people avoid looking at their 401(k)s when the stock market is down.”

My guess is that the suckers will be back. Maddow will pivot with a wrist flick and a never-mind right into the next fever dream.

There’s a market among neurotic leftists for the drug of delusional denial and the Hoax Queen’s got an endless supply.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.