Dana Bash, Jewish CNN anchor taking over flagship show ‘Inside Politics’

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Dana Bash, a correspondent and anchor on CNN. (CNN/HBO Max)

By Adam Kovac, The Forward
Published April 27, 2023

Dana Bash, the CNN reporter who grew up going to Jewish summer camp and hosted a show last year about antisemitism, will take over as anchor of the network’s flagship political program.

This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

In a statement released Wednesday, the cable news channel announced that Bash will succeed her ex-husband John King as the sole weekday anchor of Inside Politics, which airs at noon EST daily.

“I am thrilled to be taking over as anchor of Inside Politics,” said Bash. “After nearly 30 years at CNN covering campaigns, Capitol Hill and the White House, I am excited to helm a program devoted to the politics that impact Americans’ lives.”

King will lead a new program focused entirely on voters in battleground states leading up to the 2024 presidential election. King converted to Judaism before marrying Bash.

On her Twitter account on Thursday, Bash said she was “excited to take the chair of @InsidePolitics — a storied brand that John and the IP team have made must-see political tv.”

In the past, Bash has spoken of a childhood where her family had regular Shabbat dinners and where she attended a Reform summer camp. Her mother, Frances Schwartz, holds a master’s degree from Hebrew Union College and authored a book titled The Jewish Moral Virtues. In 2022, Bash hosted a show called Rising Hate: Antisemitism in America, in which she visited several communities that had experienced anti-Jewish violence. At the time, Bash told the Forward that she was surprised at how prevalent antisemitic violence was in the United States, but that reporting on it had struck a personal note for her. Her grandparents on her mother’s side were Holocaust survivors who had lost close family to the Nazis.

“Very intuitively, I knew that it was severe antisemitism that upended and changed the trajectory of my family,” she said.

Throughout much of Thursday, Bash’s social media was largely devoted to antisemitism, including tweets about a recent interview with action star and former California Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger. The two had been part of a forum at USC Annenberg on “terminating hate,” a reference to Schwarzenegger’s enduring film role as the Terminator. Also included in the forum was USC Shoah Foundation leader and academic Robert Williams.