MSNBC‘s star host Rachel Maddow will return to hosting her 9 p.m. show five nights per week later this month in a temporary move connected to the first 100 days of the Trump administration.
Maddow, of course, currently only hosts her show on Monday nights, and on evenings with major news events. Alex Wagner hosts the 9 p.m. hour Tuesday-Friday.
The temporary setup will see Maddow one again in the anchor chair every night at 9 starting on inauguration day, Jan. 20.
Wagner, meanwhile, will be hitting the road for what MSNBC is calling “Trumpland: The First 100 Days,” in which she will travel the country reporting on the impact of Trump’s policies and impact.
Both Rachel Maddow and Alex Wagner will return to their normal schedules beginning May 1.
“This is a consequential next chapter in American politics,” MSNBC president Rashida Jones said in a statement. “The moment we’re in requires us to cover the early days of the new administration from all over the country – from the nation’s capital, where policy is being implemented, to talking to those in key communities and constituencies impacted by those policies. No one is better equipped to bring those stories from the field to MSNBC viewers than our intrepid Alex Wagner.”
For Trump’s inaugural, MSNBC will be bringing all of its top afternoon and evening hosts to the effort, with Maddow joining Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid, Ari Melber, Chris Hayes, Alex Wagner, Lawrence O’Donnell, Stephanie Ruhle and Jen Psaki for coverage.
Maddow is by a significant margin the most popular primetime host on MSNBC, but in recent years since her 2021 contract she has expanded her portfolio to include films, podcasts (like Bag Man and Ultra) and other endeavors.
She cut back on hosting her nightly show in 2022, shifting to a once per week format, with Alex Wagner tapped to succeed her the rest of the week.
Maddow told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023 that, in some ways, her new role required a lot more work.
“With the five-days-a-week show, I became a pretty good compartmentalizer,” she said at the time. “We built a staff cadence where, unless something really crazy happened, we were not calling each other on weekends. I think that’s how we were able to avoid burnout for all that time. Now I have an uncompartmentalizable work life, and I haven’t figured it out yet. I work seven days a week instead of five. But it doesn’t feel like as much of a grind.”
Now, at least for a few months, that cadence will return, and during a particularly newsworthy moment for MSNBC, which is surely betting that its loyal viewers will want its sharpest voice on-air every night.
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