MSNBC wants to host America’s “fun Saturday night dinner party”

Now that Donald Trump has surpassed the first 100 days of his second term, left-leaning MSNBC is rolling out the final phase of its major staff shakeup in hopes of winning back an audience dejected by the bloodletting at the ballot and cable boxes. Network star Rachel Maddow is stepping back from hosting a weeknight show to just one evening broadcast a week, and a host of fresh and familiar faces are getting rotated into a new lineup that looks to rely on expertise to guide deeper conversations about the Trump administration and beyond. 

I spoke with the hosts of MSNBC’s new Saturday and Sunday evening show, Antonia Hylton, Elise Jordan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Catherine Rampell, about their three-hour-long program’s planned mix of culture war, foreign policy, economic and political coverage. 

“We want to go beyond just the talking points,” Rampell, a Washington Post columnist, said of the new show, “The Weekend: Primetime.” To “get to conversations that were maybe bulldozed during the week,” Hylton, an Emmy-winning NBC News correspondent, added. 

“MSNBC viewers,” Hylton pointed out, “care about all of the things the four of us do. They like education stories. They are really worried about the economy. They are trying to understand our political moment day-in-and-day-out. And they are very engaged on foreign policy; very worried about what is happening in the Middle East.”

Featuring “healthy disagreements” with newsmakers, “comedians, creatives, film directors and actors,” Hylton, who previously worked for Vice, said the “The Weekend: Primetime” is meant to “feel like you are invited into a space with us, able to sit on the couch and a have a really good conversation about whatever else is happening in the culture that is just fun to talk about on a Saturday or Sunday.” Like a “fun Saturday night dinner party,” co-host Elise Jordan added. 

Hosts with a mix of professional and ideological backgrounds are part of a growing pattern on MSNBC. Jordan, who formerly served as a staffer to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said she hopes her connections to the Libertarian Party could provide rare moments of actual ideological debate that potentially lead to points of agreement. “It’s a good viewpoint for liberals to hear from.” 

“How do we better understand those we disagree with and learn from them?” Rampell said the show seeks to answer that question “in good faith.”  

“It’s not that interesting to have a conversation among four people who all agree with each other,” Rampell argued, calling it a “much more engaging conversation.” But, the frequent CNN debate guest promised, “The Weekend: Primetime” will not devolve into a “boxing match like some other shows.”  

“All four of us are going to try to build this big tent together and lean on each other to do that,” Hylton said. “All coming at it from a place of wanting things to be better and wanting to be civil,” Jordan added, and “a strong belief in democracy and the importance of free press.”

Longtime MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin, who has hosted his own weekend program for years, said the weekend show also hopes to introduce MSNBC’s audience to alternative media content creators and activists, as the Trump White House hosted this week a “new media” press briefing for MAGA influencers. Hylton, who will continue reporting NBC News during the week, said she believes the way to “rebuild and repair” bridges of trust broken between the media and the audience is to get out into the field and give voice to the people. “We will be able to actually sit with our guests, tell their stories and have really thoughtful conversations.”

“Our hope is that when people sit with us on set or sit with us on their couch that they are able to talk about their lives, their work in a way that they can’t with two to five minutes on set or on Zoom during the work week.”

“The Weekend: Primetime” will air from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. ET on Saturdays and Sundays.