# Jonathan Capehart

Jonathan T. Capehart (born July 2, 1967) is an American journalist and liberal television commentator. He writes for The Washington Post's PostPartisan blog and is host of The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC.

## Background

Capehart grew up in Hazlet, New Jersey, the third of four children born to Margaret Capehart. His father died when he was young. At the age of 16, his family moved to nearby Newark, New Jersey, after his mother remarried; and he attended Saint Benedict's Preparatory School. He received a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) academic degree majoring in political science from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, an institution founded 1866 by the Congregationalist Church (today merged into the United Church of Christ since 1957).

## Career

Before his work with The Washington Post and MSNBC, Capehart was a researcher for NBC's The Today Show. He worked for the New York Daily News, serving as a member of its editorial board from 1993 to 2000. At the time of his hiring, Capehart was the youngest-ever member of the newspaper's editorial board. He left the Daily News in 2000 to work at Bloomberg News. Capehart advised and wrote speeches for Michael Bloomberg during his 2001 run for New York City mayor. He returned to the New York Daily News in 2002, serving as deputy editor of the editorial page until 2004. Capehart joined the global public relations company Hill & Knowlton in December 2004 as a Senior Vice President and senior counselor of public affairs.
Capehart joined the staff of The Washington Post as a journalist and member of its editorial board in 2007. He continues in that capacity and is a contributing commentator for MSNBC. He also hosts the Cape Up podcast, in which he talks to newsmakers about race, religion, age, gender, and cultural identity in politics.
Capehart began guest hosting the WNYC radio show Midday on WNYC (formerly The Leonard Lopate Show) in 2018.
He hosted the premiere episode of The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC on December 13, 2020. He is also the fill-in host of The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on Friday edition.
Capehart replaced Mark Shields in the Friday political commentary segment on the PBS NewsHour starting in January 2021. On March 30, 2022, Capehart became an associate editor of The Washington Post.
In February 2023, Capehart's The Sunday Show was expanded to Saturday as well, becoming The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart, beginning on February 18, 2023.
Capehart has analyzed how, in concurrence with the work of Jonathan Metzl, white identity affects state-based policy making in the US, such as gun rights in Missouri and health care in Tennessee.

## False allegation about Bernie Sanders

In February 2016, Capehart published a false allegation about Senator Bernie Sanders, who was well known for his activism in civil rights causes. Capehart alleged that Sanders and his campaign had been misrepresenting a photograph that shows Sanders speaking at a civil rights sit-in at the University of Chicago in 1962. Capehart wrote that the Sanders campaign should "stop physically placing him where he existed only in spirit," arguing that the photo showed an activist named Rappaport, rather than Sanders, and implying that Sanders was not even at the event. That claim was refuted by the photographer/documentarian of the event, Danny Lyon, who called Capehart's claim "outrageous." Lyon provided additional photos from the event confirming that Sanders was a participant and was indeed the man in the photo, a fact later confirmed by the University of Chicago. Rather than recanting his allegation, Capehart wrote a follow-up article titled, "Bernie Sanders and the Clash of Memory," in which Capehart acknowledged Lyon's photographic evidence but said that a friend of Rappaport and a woman who was married to Rappaport for 5 years had both identified the man in the photo as Rappaport.

## Personal life

In May 2016, Capehart became engaged to his boyfriend of over five years, Nick Schmit, who was the assistant chief of protocol at the State Department. Capehart and Schmit were married by former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder on January 7, 2017.
Capehart was a key contributor to a New York Daily News staff entry that received the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 1999. The series of editorials condemned the financial mismanagement of Harlem's Apollo Theater.