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 covering a second Trump term in a new role for the network. “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 big move to MSNBC prime time from their weekend panel program, cohosting a new 7 p.m. show titled The Weeknight. It launches on May 5, taking the slot previously held by Joy Reid, who has since departed the network and set up a Substack. The show will air for two hours on Monday and one hour from Tuesday through Friday. The expansion of the Weekend franchise, which was launched with the trio in January 2024, comes as newly appointed MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler begins to put her mark on the network’s programming lineup.
And the three are ready to take on the challenge of anchoring a show on weeknights, which will see them react to the flood of news that’s come out of the White House, and elsewhere, throughout the day. Sanders Townsend points out that they all have gotten some experience in the 7 p.m. slot since Reid’s exit. “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 asked 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 regular contributor to the network for more than a decade, says. Sanders Townsend, who previously served as the chief spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris, adds, “It’s like we’re inviting you into our cool-kids table to talk about it all.”
All three of the hosts have been either directly involved in politics at a granular level or around it to some degree. Steele previously served as the lieutenant governor of Maryland and the chairman of the Republican National Committee; Sanders Townsend was a Democratic operative and adviser; and Menendez, who has been covering politics for years, is also the daughter of disgraced former senator Bob Menendez. When asked how they respond to complaints about a 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 also points out, referencing the Fox News weekend anchor turned top Pentagon official. She adds that the hosts’ experience being “literally in the room” and around 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 conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Vanity Fair: The launch of the new show is coming at a particularly volatile political moment, a second Trump term with ongoing legal drama and consistent institutional battles. How are you looking at approaching this news cycle?
Michael Steele: Volatile? Alicia, you think it’s volatile right now? It’s crazy. From my perspective, that’s what makes the conversation more exciting, to be able to find fresh angles about it. As a former elected official who ran a political party and really has an appreciation of how these dynamics are playing out negatively for the country, and how do we talk about that, what I love about what the three of us do is that we actually want to talk about it. We don’t want to get into the sort of performative kind of conversation where you’re not really pulling back layers of it like an onion. Each layer you pull back, you still cry. That’s what we try to do. We try to help people understand what’s happening right now and give it context historically, politically, socially, culturally, and with some humor and seriousness and all that’s required to have a good conversation.
