White House Correspondents’ Association Chief Gets Big Job at MSNBC, Lending Weight to Accusations of Liberal Bias Against Embattled Reporters’ Group

With the White House Correspondents’ Association in the fight of its life after the Trump Administration stripped the body of its core responsibility, an unwelcome spotlight is shining on the embattled group’s president who is leaving his job at Politico to co-host a liberal panel show on MSNBC. A co-author of Politico’s Playbook newsletter and a Politico White House correspondent, Eugene Daniels, has long been accused of overt liberal bias, especially when it comes to favorable coverage of Vice President Harris, who was the focus of his White House beat during the Biden Administration. During the 2024 campaign, former the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said on his podcast that Ms. Harris was going to make Mr. Daniels the White House press secretary if she won. Yet with Ms. Harris, for now, out of the picture, Mr. Daniels is seeking better pastures outside of Politico. At MSNBC, he will co-host a roundtable show on the weekend. Conservative commentator Erick Erickson wrote, “Eugene Daniels is leaving his position to go to MSNBC, a leftwing partisan network, so we should take what he says with a grain of salt.”Another conservative commentator, who goes by the name Futurist on X wrote, “MSNBC IS ALL IN ON WOKE. Eugene Daniels, the President of the White House Correspondents’ Association, is leaving Politico and joining MSNBC to co-host a weekend roundtable show. The pink suit, painted nails, and brooch says it all. Painful to watch.”A fixture of Washington’s party scene, Mr. Daniels can’t be missed due to his bold fashion statements. A conservative commentator, Isabel Brown, posted some pictures of Mr. Daniels’ outfits on X and wrote, “There’s definitely ZERO bias in coverage of the President there.”White House Correspondent and MSNBC contributor Eugene Daniels attends the WME x Puck WHCD 2024 Party on April 25, 2024 at Washington, DC. Shannon Finney/Getty Images for WMEMr. Daniels’ move to MSNBC comes as the ratings-challenged liberal network is in the midst of an historic staff shakeup. Left-wing host Joy Reid, who often spouted inflammatory rhetoric that tried to link conservative ideology to white supremacy, has had her show canceled – as it had only garnered 973,000 total viewers in the month of February – in a reported attempt to make the network more appealing to conservatives and avoid friction with the Trump Administration over regulatory issues. Mr. Daniels’ addition to the lineup is underscoring that the WHCA, which White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday accused of bias towards DC-based, establishment journalists, is not being overseen by an objective reporter. Even during his time at Politico, Mr. Daniels has not been shy about sharing his liberal views.One clip that has gone viral is a from an MSNBC panel Mr. Daniels joined during the 2024 election when he claimed President Trump was having a “hard time” running against Vice President Harris “because she’s a Black woman.”“You remember he would tussle with the woman… our colleagues on the White House beat, he held his kind of most angry self for Black women, right? If they asked him a question, he would have the worst things to say about them,” he said. He also said Mr. Trump’s attacks on Ms. Harris were because of her race. Mr. Daniels also stirred up outrage when he claimed Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said Ms. Harris had spoken at a “colored” sorority, leading to an avalanche of attacks on the conservative network for its alleged incident of using racially tinged language.Roughly an hour later, he posted on X, “I spoke to Fox News about this and plan on speaking to Brian when he is off air. They’ve made clear to me that he used college, not colored. The audio is garbled, but I am going to take Brian and his team at their word.” However, by then, the damage had been done, and many questioned why he seemingly made such an explosive accusation without getting a comment first. During an interview with Ms. Harris in September, he asked if Mr. Trump and Vice President Vance’s comments about Haitian migrants at Springfield, Ohio, was “a case of irredeemable racism that can’t be mitigated by any rational action.”Mr. Daniels did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication. During his time as the head of the White House Correspondents’ Association, he has issued several statements highly critical of the changes to the way the press operates in the White House in the month that Mr. Trump has been in office. This week, he said a decision by the White House to take responsibility for determining which reporters are allowed in the press pool, a rotating group of reporters who closely cover the president’s movements, “tears at the independence of the free press in the United States.”The decision likely means that conservative outlets that have typically been excluded from the pool will be given the privilege to join in, while creating a system where legacy outlets will have rotating times in the pool. Some of Mr. Trump’s fans cheered the move, but even some reporters from conservative outlets, such as Fox News’ senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, cautioned that future Democratic presidents could use the precedent to further freeze out conservative outlets. While Mr. Daniels has been quick to accuse conservatives of racism, he has had glowing words for Democrats. In July, he told Mediaite that the “excitement” for Ms. Harris was “insane.” He also defended the then-vice president and insisted that she was not Mr. Biden’s “border tsar.”The left-leaning Poynter Institute published a glowing profile on Mr. Daniels in November that described him as an “expert in all things Kamala Harris” with a “fashion sense that mirrors his bold style of reporting.” It also noted he is a “self-proclaimed ‘walking Beyoncé encyclopedia,’” an attribute Mr. Daniels boasts about in his X bio.

White House Correspondents’ Association Chief Gets Big Job at MSNBC, Lending Weight to Accusations of Liberal Bias Against Embattled Reporters’ Group

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