The Hosts of MSNBC’s ‘The Weeknight’ Say They’ll Cover Trump 2.0 “Without Fear, Without Favor”

“The mission of MSNBC remains the same, regardless of who’s in office—lead with the facts, share context,” Alicia Menendez tells Vanity Fair of overlaying a 2nd Trump time period in a brand new function for the community. “We are covering this administration without fear, without favor, and with a lot of coffee.”

Menendez, Symone Sanders Townsend, and Michael Steele are all making the large transfer to MSNBC high time from their weekend panel program, cohosting a brand new 7 p.m. display titled The Weeknight. It launches on May 5, taking the slot in the past held by way of Joy Reid, who has since departed the community and arrange a Substack. The display will air for 2 hours on Monday and one hour from Tuesday via Friday. The enlargement of the Weekend franchise, which used to be introduced with the trio in January 2024, comes as newly appointed MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler starts to place her mark at the community’s programming lineup.

And the 3 are able to take at the problem of anchoring a display on weeknights, which is able to see them react to the flood of reports that’s pop out of the White House, and somewhere else, all over the day. Sanders Townsend issues out that all of them have got some revel in within the 7 p.m. slot since Reid’s go out. “We’ve all been hosting it and have gotten in kind of that muscle memory.”

“We’re 16 months in, and Michael still likes to be like, ‘Well, I’m new here,’” quips Menendez when requested about their dynamic as a trio. “Look, I’m just a brother trying to figure it all out. I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes,” Steele, who has been a standard contributor to the community for greater than a decade, says. Sanders Townsend, who in the past served as the executive spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris, provides, “It’s like we’re inviting you into our cool-kids table to talk about it all.”

All 3 of the hosts had been both immediately eager about politics at a granular stage or round it to some extent. Steele in the past served because the lieutenant governor of Maryland and the chairman of the Republican National Committee; Sanders Townsend used to be a Democratic operative and adviser; and Menendez, who has been overlaying politics for years, could also be the daughter of disgraced former senator Bob Menendez. When requested how they reply to court cases a couple of government-to-media pipeline, Sanders Townsend says, “We aren’t the first, to be very clear, and we won’t be the last.”

“And now apparently there’s a journalist-to-government pipeline. Hello, Secretary Pete Hegseth,” Sanders Townsend additionally issues out, referencing the Fox News weekend anchor grew to become most sensible Pentagon authentic. She provides that the hosts’ revel in being “literally in the room” and round politics “helps us, frankly, connect with not just the viewers better, but our guests.”

“If you’ve written talking points, if you’ve been on the talking points, then you know how to knock people off the talking points,” Menendez says.

This dialog has been edited for period and readability.

Vanity Fair: The release of the brand new display is coming at a specifically risky political second, a 2nd Trump time period with ongoing criminal drama and constant institutional battles. How are you having a look at drawing near this information cycle?

Michael Steele: Volatile? Alicia, you assume it’s risky at the moment? It’s loopy. From my standpoint, that’s what makes the dialog extra thrilling, in an effort to in finding contemporary angles about it. As a former elected authentic who ran a political birthday celebration and truly has an appreciation of the way those dynamics are enjoying out negatively for the rustic, and the way can we discuss that, what I really like about what the 3 folks do is that we in reality wish to discuss it. We don’t wish to get into this type of performative more or less dialog the place you’re now not truly pulling again layers of it like an onion. Each layer you pull again, you continue to cry. That’s what we attempt to do. We attempt to assist other people perceive what’s going down at the moment and provides it context traditionally, politically, socially, culturally, and with some humor and seriousness and all that’s required to have a just right dialog.