Highly strung MSNBC anchor soapboxes about why he quit plum job at Washington Post

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Longtime Washington Post opinion writer and current MSNBC anchor Jonathan Capehart has detailed his decision to leave the paper after nearly two decades.
Subbing in for Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's 'The Last Word' Thursday, Capehart said it was the editorial board's increasingly conservative tone as of late that led him to make the call.
'American democracy is in peril', he claimed, after taking a buyout from the Jeff Bezos-run paper nearly two weeks ago.
He will still have his own show on MSNBC to go back to - 'The Weekend' - where Eugene Daniels, a self-professed ' Kamala Harris expert', and the Post's current congressional correspondent, Jackie Alemany, are his co-hosts.
Also a frequent PBS NewsHour contributor, Capehart told O'Donnell's usual audience that it was Bezos's increasingly hand-on approach to the newspaper that set him off - as well as Americans' 'optimism' under Donald Trump.
He explained: 'In February, the owner of the Post decided that the section would focus on the twin pillars of personal liberties and free markets.'
'We in the section received an email from our new editor, which reiterated that and added, it's also important that we communicate with optimism about this country in particular and the future in general.
'How can we communicate with optimism about the future in general when we're living in the here and now, where American democracy is in peril?'
The spiel saw him take aim at Post owner Jeff Bezos, who announced the Post's opinion section would only focus on 'free markets and personal liberties' back in February
Capehart, 58, had been referring to Bezos' recent interference with the Post's editorial process since Trump's reelection, which was followed by a wave of exits from the Post's largely progressive opinion section.
Back in February, Bezos announced the Post's opinion section would only focus on 'free markets and personal liberties' - sparking the negative response.
Months before, Bezos ruled to not endorse a presidential candidate shortly before the election, after years of propping up Democrats.
Around that time, the Post's then-new publisher and CEO, Will Lewis, a former editor of the British Daily Telegraph, flat out told Post journalists: 'People are not reading your stuff'.
A round of layoffs ensued, in late February, after which The Post announced it was implementing a buyout program targeting veteran staffers.
Capehart, on-air, said he accepting the offer because the editorial board he belonged to since 2017 was now being expected to "constantly extoll the beauty of a home's doors, crown moldings, and windows when the rest of the house is engulfed in flames and its foundation is flooding."
He further claimed 'patriotism is incomplete' if the ideology does not allow for a "mirror to be held up" to the US and its citizens.
'The administration is playing chicken with federal courts,' Capehart said.
'The administration is using masked federal agents to snatch people off the streets and send them to hellish prisons abroad.
'The administration deployed the military on the streets of an American city,' he continued. 'The president is using his office to enrich himself and his family.
'The president has turned Congress, a co-equal branch of government, into the staff wing of the executive branch,' he claimed.
'And we're supposed to ignore it, leave it to others to wrestle with on their news pages and websites? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
'The Constitution gives us the inherent, unapologetically patriotic right to rail against such affronts to democracy and the rule of law, and the First Amendment demands it,' he added.
Capehart famously cried while reflecting on the memory of the January 6 riots live on MSNBC, during the insurrection's third anniversary.
He specifically cited the January 6 Capitol siege as a turning point in where MAGA supporters of former president Donald Trump violently invaded the Capitol Building in Washington DC in an effort to disrupt a joint session of Congress that was busy counting electoral votes in Joe Biden's favor.
Back in 2021, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the same MSNBC host announced that he believed that Trump supporters are more of a threat than the Taliban or ISIS.
Capehart famously cried while reflecting on the memory of the January 6 riots live on MSNBC, during the insurrection's third anniversary in 2024. He currently hosts The Weekend with Eugene Daniels and former fellow Post staffer Jackie Alemany
At the time, Capehart called out 'MAGA and the domestic threat', which he said was far 'more worrisome than any foreign threat', during an appearance at PBS NewsHour, where he is a regular presence.
The Pulitzer Prize winner has continued the decry Trump for straying from the country's founding principles since. Such a stance was effectively barred with Bezos's edict back in February.
The move saw the Post's longtime editorial page editor, David Shipley, resign immediately, before dozens of others followed suit.
The terms of Capehart's buyout, meanwhile, remain unknown.