MS Host Claims He Was Getting Military-Style ‘Thank You for Your Service’ Compliments After Trump Election

MS NOW’s Jonathan Capehart claimed that journalists like himself started receiving military-style “thank you for your service” messages from the public after President Donald Trump’s first election.

Capehart joined Symone Sanders-Townsend, Don Lemon, and others for a panel discussion at the 35th anniversary event for News Action Network in New York on Thursday. Capehart wrapped up the panel with his thoughts on how the media had drastically changed since he got his start in the business in 1993.

According to Capehart, post-Trump’s first election was the first time he ever started receiving “thank you for your service” comments from the public, which he’d only ever seen given to members of the military. He admitted he was “taken aback” by the comments.

Capehart said:

I just want to leave everyone with this. When I got into this business, I wanted to get into journalism because I wanted to be a journalist. It was a job to tell stories, to tell stories that interested me since I was an opinion writer, an opinion journalist. But after the first Trump term, something started happening, where when you live in Washington, you’re used to hearing people say to members of the military, thank you for your service. Thank you for your service. But suddenly in 2017, I started getting that. And I’m sure, Don, you started getting that. And when you joined us, Symone, I’m sure you started getting that… People saying to us, to journalists, thank you for your service.

He went on to explain that the comments made him uncomfortable, but they also convinced him that working in the media is a “calling.”

He explained:

At first, I was a little taken aback by it. I definitely still feel undeserving of it because I am in no way a member of the military who puts their life on the line, literally, for this country. But in listening to what they were saying the sincerity in which they were saying it, I began to understand more clearly. There’s only one profession protected in the Constitution of the United States and that is the press. And when people started saying to me, saying to us, thank you for your service, what they’re really saying is, thank you for standing up for the Constitution, for the free press, and for our ability to know what is happening in our name.

“This job is not so much a job now… I now understand that being in these jobs is a calling,” he added.

Watch above via News Action Network.

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