Jonathan Capehart and Eugene Daniels – along with Jackie Alemany – will have 6 hours each weekend to talk politics.
Amid cratering ratings following the election of Donald Trump in November, MSNBC is revamping its lineup to include two out gay Black men on a new version of The Weekend.
MSNBC vet Jonathan Capehart and newly named MSNBC senior Washington correspondent Eugene Daniels join Jackie Alemany, the network’s new Washington correspondent, for the three-person panel show.
The addition follows the network’s cancellation of The ReidOut, the long-running primetime show featuring Black MSNBC anchor Joy Reid.
Capehart and Daniels will be the first two out gay Black men to host a news program together on a major network.
Earlier this year, MSNBC was cleaved from network partner NBC News to become an independent news-gathering entity.
Capehart is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and associate editor for the Washington Post. He currently hosts The Saturday/Sunday Show With Jonathan Capehart on weekend evenings.
Daniels was White House correspondent for Politico and co-author of their influential insider publication Playbook. He’s also the current president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, where he’ll continue to serve.
Alemany decamps from the Washington Post, where she’s been a White House reporter for six years.
The three co-hosts appeared on Morning Joe Wednesday to share news of the new Weekend.
“We have so much to talk about, and thankfully, we’re going to have six hours — Saturday and Sunday — to really keep the conversation going,” Capehart said.
The new hosts take over an earlier incarnation of the show featuring Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez. The former hosts will move en masse to a new primetime show replacing Reid at 7 p.m. weeknights.
MSNBC’s ratings debacle inspired a purge of longtime talent on their primetime schedule. Along with Reid, Alex Wagner was axed from the lineup, leaving no hosts of color in the network’s nightside anchor chairs.
Reid is leaving the network, while Wagner, who’s now been booted from an anchor spot twice in her time with the network, will remain with MSNBC as a senior political analyst.
Rachel Maddow, out host of the network’s 6 p.m. hour and the face of MSNBC, called those primetime cuts “indefensible,” citing dozens of experienced producers who have been let go or forced to reapply for their jobs.
“The anxiety and the discombobulation is off the charts at a time when this job is already extra stressful and difficult,” she said on her program before the latest lineup additions were announced.
Daniels and Alemany are the first new hires under the leadership of MSBNC’s new president, Rebecca Kutler.
