Its easy to get viewers when you feed directly into people's misplaced hate and vitriol. Populist dictators have been doing it for decades. Why take responsibility for your own problems when you have talking heads telling you your situation isn't your fault but is instead the fault of some "other" group. Fox News has been doing this a lot harder and longer than MSNBC. MSNBC was way late to the game and still doesn't do it nearly as hard as Fox(or have nearly the uneducated audience that is most susceptible to this kind of talk and manipulation).