Revolving Door: MSNBC Hires Kamala Harris’s Ex-Chief Spokeswoman, Symone Sanders

NEW ORLEANS, LA - JULY 06: Symone Sanders speaks onstage during the 2018 Essence Festival
Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Essence

MSNBC has hired Vice President Kamala Harris’s ex-chief spokeswoman and senior adviser, Symone Sanders, Politico reported Monday.

Upon Sanders’s departure from the vice president’s office in December amid anonymous accusations of employee mistreatment, sabotage, and “shitshow” operations, MSNBC hired Sanders to “host a weekend show and a show on its streaming platform”:

MSNBC announced on Monday that former press secretary Symone Sanders is joining the network as the host of both a weekend program and a show airing on NBC’s streaming platform Peacock. Both shows are slated to launch later this spring. The network said further details, including the show name, premier date, and time slot, will be announced in the coming months.

Before Sanders worked for Harris, she was national press secretary for presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) during the 2016 presidential campaign.

After Sanders lost his primary bid to failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, CNN hired Symone Sanders as a political commentator.

In 2019, she left CNN and moved to President Biden’s campaign as a senior advisor. After Biden’s victory, she was named chief spokeswoman and senior advisor to Harris.

Sanders left Harris’s office while reports of infighting oozed from the vice president’s office. Breitbart reported in July that “Other staffers in the Biden administration told Axios Harris’s office is a ‘shitshow.’ The outlet describes it as filled with ‘poorly-managed… people who don’t have long-term relationships with her,’ an overall ‘operation sometimes visibly out of sync with Biden’s.'”

“Aides ‘are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment,’ a staffer told Politico. . . . ‘It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s—.'”

Sanders, however, denied in July such toxicity existed in Harris’s office.

“There’s not consternation among aides. That is not true. … I hear that there are critics. Those who talk often do not know and those who know usually are not the ones talking,” Sanders told Axios.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø

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