-Our first guest tonight is a journalist you know
from Showtime's "The Circus,"
"CBS Saturday Morning" and "The Mole."
She is the host of "Alex Wagner Tonight," which airs
Tuesdays through Fridays on MSNBC.
Please welcome to the show Alex Wagner, everybody!
♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
It's so nice to have you here.
-It was so nice to take the elevator up a few floors.
-It's lovely to have you back in the building.
You're hosting the 9:00 p.m. hour on MSNBC.
-I am. -Tuesdays to Fridays.
One of the really exciting things about it is
you're the only Asian American hosting a cable prime-time show.
Is that something that is both, I don't know, is it humbling?
Is it frustrating that it's true?
-Yes, it is both of those things.
It's absolutely humbling to be representing a huge diaspora
that is definitely not all within me.
I mean, Asian Americans are wildly diverse.
I'm so proud to be Burmese American.
I'm so proud to have the heritage that I do, and I try
and do my best to, you know, represent
that part of the world on our show.
But it's insane that in the year 2023,
I'm the only Asian American prime-time cable news host.
That should not be.
-Well, hopefully you're the first of many.
Hopefully this is the beginning of something.
But I also want to ask, you've hosted a show before,
but this is a big one. -Yeah.
-It must make it a little bit easier because
you have a great many friends over at MSNBC.
Including you threw up a tweet of you and Chris Hayes.
So you and Chris have known each other 25 years?
-Oh, my God, and we're only 27. -That's so weird.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
Like, from a very young age.
We've known each other since, like, acne days.
-Really? -That's how long --
-You saw Chris Hayes with acne?
-I'm not saying whose acne it was.
I'm just saying that's how long -- our hormones were in a
different place, and now they're going into another place.
But yeah, we've known each other since college.
And I remember -- he's a year younger than me, and when he got
into our college, Brown, I remember the upperclassmen were
like, "Chris Hayes is coming to Brown."
And I was like, "Who is this Chris Hayes?"
And now I know what the fuss was about.
-Chris Hayes was so cool, people at college
knew him before he got there?
-Let's say -- is it coolness? I don't know.
Notoriety. I'm just going to say notoriety.
I can say that as someone who loves him deeply
and has known him a very long time.
-You received some advice,
and I received the same thing when I started this show.
And again, you've had your own show before,
so I know it's a little bit different.
But how long it takes to be comfortable
behind the desk of your own show.
I know you've just started this. -Yeah.
-But do you feel like you're there yet
and what is the date you have on the calendar
for where you want to be comfortable?
-It's March of 2079 is when I'm going to
start feeling comfortable, Seth.
I think -- I'm very -- I don't know if everybody else is,
I'm very forgiving with myself as a host.
I'm like, "It's an evolution. I messed up the teleprompter.
I got the facts --"
No, I don't -- We try not to get the facts wrong.
-Yeah. "I'm making it up!" -"Just go with it!"
You know, I think stepping into the 9:00 p.m. slot on MSNBC,
previously occupied Monday through Friday
by the great Rachel Maddow... -Yep.
-...is a huge honor, and no one can replicate what she does.
And I think we wanted to figure out what the DNA of our show is
and that just takes some time.
We've tried some stuff that's worked,
we've tried some stuff that hasn't.
And I think luckily our audience seems to be with us.
People are forgiving. People are excited to see,
you know, the plane being built on the runway.
And I'm just thrilled that I'm still the air six months later.
-Well, I feel the same way.
One of the things you've addressed, which I want to ask
you about, because obviously the Republicans are coming off
sort of underwhelming midterms.
But it does seem like they're
still sticking with this culture war message.
And one of the people you see using that as a tool more often
than others is Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
You've been covering the way
he's been approaching politics via education.
Can you speak to some of the steps he's taking
and maybe why we should be afraid of those?
-I mean, you should be afraid of anything that systematically
tries to disenfranchise people and whitewash history,
which is exactly what's happening down in Florida.
We should care about it not just because it's Florida but also
because Ron DeSantis may end up being the Republican nominee
for president in 2024.
But basically what he's done is this kind of Orwellian plot
to censor what is being taught in the classrooms
through the passage of various legislation,
book bans and book approvals.
I mean, I was talking to a teacher
in Manatee County this week.
They've literally had to paper over their school libraries
and classrooms because the books haven't all been approved
to these state-set standards.
Kids can't read books in classrooms because teachers are
so scared they could get slapped with a felony for running afoul
of these new standards.
Ron DeSantis has said, "I'm not going to approve an AP course
on African-American studies in the state of Florida
because so far I've seen no evidence
that it has any educational value."
I mean, this is the way we reindoctrinate people to sort of
a white Christian nationalist agenda, which is very much
at the heart of the Republican sort of platform,
if you will, right now, and Ron DeSantis has been
insanely effective in passing this legislation,
creating a climate of fear, and ultimately undermining a lot
of the social and cultural progress that this country
has seen in the last 15 and 20 years.
So I think we should all be paying attention to it.
I've gone down to Florida. I've talked to teachers and students.
It's part of the field work that
I think is essential to being a journalist.
I'm surprised I'm still allowed
to enter the state of Florida, at this point.
I hope you're not watching, Governor DeSantis.
-I don't think he is.
[ Laughter ]
-Probably not. -Probably not, yeah.
-Probably not.
-"I like the monologue, but that's it!"
-"Then I turn it off!" [ Laughter ]
You know, he's trying to take the one -- There's one school,
New College, down in Florida that's the bastion
of sort of progressive thought.
He's trying to stack the board of trustees at that college
to basically reverse the curriculum that they have there.
I mean, everything he can do to censor, marginalize,
whitewash, and otherwise create a culture of
intimidation around those who want to tell the truth about
this country and our systemic injustices,
he's doing it, and he's doing it with ruthless efficacy.
And now you have other states that are looking at Ron DeSantis
and saying, "Maybe we should do that too."
South Carolina is looking at some of the same legislation
that they've passed in Florida.
This is the new agenda of the right.
If you can't win fair,
win using any anti-democratic means necessary.
-This is -- I think it's -- This is less important,
what I'm going to ask about because obviously the outcome is
the most important and you do have teachers who are scared
and you do have books that are banned.
Do you think -- I know it's kind of impossible to know that
Ron DeSantis came at this because he was afraid of kids
reading books, or he came at this because he wanted to be
the guy who could stand up at a debate and say,
"I'm the guy who banned books"?
-He wants to -- This is all political calculus.
This is -- I mean, Ron DeSantis, if he could, the license plate
for Florida would say, "this is where woke goes to die."
That's all he says about his state.
That's like the selling --
That's the motto for the state of Florida.
He knows it plays well
with people on the right who want a culture war.
And so far, I mean, he won handily
in the last gubernatorial race. It's worked for him.
The question is whether the extreme policies that
he's pursued in the state of Florida work well
on the national stage if, in fact, he does run for president
against Donald Trump, which is a cage match I don't know if I'm,
like, physically, mentally prepared for.
-I don't think Ron DeSantis is either.
-That may be true, Seth.
-I think from a distance, you're like,
"I can take out Donald Trump," and then you get on a stage,
and you're like "Oh, man, I shouldn't have done this."
-"Maybe not, yeah."
-You have a big fan, actually backstage.
Our next guest, Bowen Yang, sings your praises.
Independent of you being on tonight,
he is a huge fan of yours.
-It's a mutual admiration society.
-Yeah. Because you hosted the reboot of the show "The Mole."
-Yes, as one does. -Yeah.
Well, you know, this was the show that's always been
in the hands of journalists.
Anderson Cooper did it back in the day.
And now you're doing it. And was that a fun show to do?
-It was not like covering the insurrection at the Capitol.
[ Laughter ]
You know, it dawned on me that some people in TV have fun.
It's not that my job isn't fun,
but, like, it's incredibly serious.
And it's a lot of traumatic material to absorb every day.
And I thought, "Oh, this could be really a fun experience,"
doing this crazy reboot that at its core is a question of trust,
which, you know, I will say there's a through line between
that and what we do in terms of political coverage.
The central conceit in American life today is, who do you trust,
who can you trust, who's really being honest here?
And that's the game in "The Mole."
So I thought, "Okay, I can create a reason why it makes
sense for me to do this and go to Australia for 10 weeks."
-Well, I'm very glad you got that trip,
no matter how you justified it to yourself.
Hey, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.
-Thanks, Seth. -Alex Wagner.
"Alex Wagner Tonight" airs Tuesdays through Fridays
at 9:00 p.m. on MSNBC. We'll be right back with Bowen Yang!