At 1:46 p.m. on Sunday, President Joe Biden announced his historic decision to end his re-election campaign. At 1:46 p.m. on Sunday, CNN was in the middle of a Fareed Zakaria GPS rerun.
The network did not cut to news coverage of the president’s decision until 1:57 p.m., with chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt filling in for resident weekend anchor Fredricka Whitfield. On MSNBC, current anchor and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced the news at 1:53 p.m. in the middle of her show, an ironic twist for MSNBC after years of interweaving former Biden aides into the network.
The odd pairings reflect how Biden’s announcement, which reporting indicated could come this weekend despite the White House’s denials, caught networks entirely flat-footed. All the major cable networks, including Fox News, did not feature their primetime anchors announcing the pivotal news, with some scrambling to swap out different hosts in the minutes after the announcement.
