Alex Wagner

Wagner grew up in Washington, D.C. Her mother, Tin Swe Thant, immigrated from Yangon, Myanmar, and graduated from Swarthmore College. Her father, Carl Wagner, was a Democratic political strategist who co-chaired Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. Wagner attended Woodrow Wilson High School before enrolling at Brown University, where she studied art history and literature and graduated in 1999.

In August 2014, Wagner married former White House nutrition policy advisor and assistant chef Sam Kass. The ceremony took place at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York. President Barack Obama attended with his family. Kass had served as the Obamas' personal chef since their years in Chicago. The couple had two sons, born in 2017 and 2019. In 2025, Wagner announced that they had divorced.

Wagner started her career in Washington think-tank research, working as a cultural correspondent for the Center for American Progress. In 2003, she became the editor-in-chief of The Fader. She spent four years at the publication directing coverage of global music movements.

Advocacy work came next. From 2007 to 2009, Wagner served as executive director of Not On Our Watch, an organization founded by George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Don Cheadle. She traveled to conflict zones in Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Myanmar to monitor human rights violations. She then returned to political reporting as the White House correspondent for Politics Daily, covering events such as the 2010 BP oil spill before moving to The Huffington Post.

MSNBC gave Wagner her first daily show in November 2011 with Now with Alex Wagner. The program aired on weekdays and combined political panel debates with cultural segments. MSNBC cancelled the show in July 2015 during a network pivot toward daytime breaking news.

Wagner moved to The Atlantic as a senior editor in 2016. Later that year, she joined CBS News to co-anchor CBS This Morning Saturday. She left CBS in March 2018 to join Showtime's political docuseries The Circus, replacing Mark Halperin. In 2022, she hosted the first season of Netflix's reboot of the reality competition The Mole.

In August 2022, Wagner returned to prime-time cable news as host of Alex Wagner Tonight. She filled Rachel Maddow's slot on Tuesdays through Fridays when Maddow reduced her schedule to Mondays. MSNBC cancelled the program in February 2025 during an evening programming restructure, though Wagner remained with the network as a contributor.

Her work also includes writing and podcasting. In 2018, she published her memoir, Futureface, which examined her family history and Burmese heritage. A young-adult edition followed in 2020. She launched the podcast Six Feet Apart in 2020 to examine the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by Runaway Country with Alex Wagner in 2025. She also appears regularly on Crooked Media's Pod Save America.