Alex Wagner


Alexandra Swe Wagner is an American journalist and author. She is the co-host of ' on Showtime and the author of '. She is also a contributor for CBS News and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. Previously, she was the anchor of the daytime program Now with Alex Wagner on MSNBC. From November 2016 until March 2018, she was a TV co-anchor on CBS This Morning Saturday. She has also been a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine since April 2016.

Early life and education

Alex Wagner was born and raised in Washington, D.C. Her mother, Tin Swe Thant, is an immigrant from Rangoon, Myanmar, who became a naturalized U.S. citizen before attending Swarthmore College. Her father, Carl Wagner, from Lansing, Iowa, was of Luxembourgish and Irish descent. He was a prominent Democratic Party political consultant who co-chaired Bill Clinton's presidential campaign. She attended Woodrow Wilson High School and graduated from Brown University in 1999, having studied art history and literature. Wagner was raised Roman Catholic.

Career

Wagner has worked as the cultural correspondent for the Center for American Progress. From 2003 to 2007, she was editor-in-chief of The Fader magazine, covering music and cultural movements from around the world. She also served as executive director of Not On Our Watch Project, an advocacy organization focused on mass atrocities and human rights violations.
Wagner then became the White House correspondent for Politics Daily, a political news magazine under AOL News. She moved to The Huffington Post after it was acquired by AOL.
As an analyst on MSNBC, Wagner appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.
On November 14, 2011, Wagner began hosting Now with Alex Wagner weekdays. On July 30, 2015, MSNBC President Phil Griffin announced that the series had been cancelled in an effort to transition the network's daytime programming to more breaking news reporting and less political commentary and opinion. The next day the program aired its final episode. MSNBC later announced that Wagner would host a weekend program, but those plans were later abandoned.
On April 26, 2016, The Atlantic announced that Wagner was leaving MSNBC to join the magazine as a senior editor. In addition to writing for The Atlantic, Wagner would moderate events with AtlanticLIVE and help with developing video and TV projects with The Atlantic Studios.
In November 2016, Wagner replaced Vinita Nair on CBS This Morning Saturday. March 17, 2018 was her last appearance on CBS This Morning Saturday as she confirmed she would be leaving that show to co-host for Showtime, replacing Mark Halperin. She remains a correspondent for CBS News.
In 2020, Wagner launched a podcast with Crooked Media and Cadence13 that addressed the COVID-19 pandemic.

Political views

She has described herself as progressive. On matters involving Israel, she believes that there is an element of "trepidation that inhibits a robust discussion about Israel in the American media" due to fears of being falsely slurred as an anti-Semite.

Personal life

On August 30, 2014, Wagner married former White House nutrition policy advisor and assistant chef Sam Kass in a ceremony held at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a restaurant in Pocantico Hills, New York. The wedding was attended by then U.S. President Barack Obama and his family, as Kass is a family friend of the former president. In 2017, Wagner gave birth to their son, Cy. She gave birth to her second child on April 16, 2019.

Books

In April 2018, Futureface, her book about her Burmese American ancestry was published.