Cheyanne Daniels, who joined Politico after covering the 2024 presidential election for The Hill, also suggested both Trump and his voters believe black women ‘shouldn’t exist’
As a master’s student at Northwestern University’s esteemed journalism school in 2020, Cheyanne Daniels revealed that she cried when President Donald Trump was elected four years earlier because she knew “horrible things were to come.” She now covers the Trump presidency for Politico.
Daniels joined the outlet as a breaking news reporter in May following a three-year stint as a “race and politics reporter” for The Hill, where she covered both the 2024 election and stories like, “John Boyega: ‘Star Wars’ ‘most whitest, elite space,'” and, “‘Power Rangers’ actor splits with writer, says casting a ‘milestone.'”
Her reporting is now largely focused on the White House, the subject of several of her posts on social media. On Nov. 7, 2020, the day the Associated Press called the presidential election for Joe Biden, Daniels tweeted: “4 years ago, I cried when I realized Donald Trump had been elected, knowing horrible things were to come. Now, I’m in my apartment in D.C., hearing people cheering in the streets screaming that he has been defeated, and I’m crying once again. But for a very different reason.”
One week later, Daniels’s euphoria seemed to fade. “Trump may have lost the election,” she wrote, “but over 70 million people voted for him — and some of those voters were people who felt, like their demagogue, that MY life as a Black woman doesn’t matter, that I shouldn’t exist, I threaten the purity of white power.”
The posts raise questions about Politico‘s decision to hire Daniels for a role that, at least for the next three years, revolves around coverage of the Trump White House and, ostensibly, requires neutrality.
In the last week alone, Daniels has covered everything from the White House’s comments on a potential government shutdown to Trump’s attempts to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.
In June, Daniels penned a piece headlined, “Black churches push back against Trump-fueled anti-DEI wave,” which quoted from the notorious anti-Semite Al Sharpton. Daniels has not criticized Sharpton for his role in inciting the 1991 Crown Heights riots but has described Trump as a “racist, homophobic, sexist, misogynistic president.” She has also lauded Kamala Harris for “refusing to attend” a bipartisan event that honored Trump, saying the move “is exactly why more POCs& women need to be included in decision makings.” Two weeks after Biden’s election, she referred to Trump supporters as “Magatts.”
Neither Daniels nor Politico, which says it delivers “straightforward facts and clear-eyed analysis” to “Cabinet secretaries and Ministers,” responded to requests for comment. Daniels locked her X account shortly after the Washington Free Beacon sought her comment.
Daniels graduated from North Central College, a private school located in the swanky Chicago suburb of Naperville, with a bachelor’s in journalism in the spring of 2020. From there, she pursued a Master of Science in Journalism at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, which the university describes as “one of the best and most prestigious graduate journalism programs in the world.”
Daniels was living in Washington, D.C., while working as a news reporter for the Northwestern-affiliated Medill News Service at the time of the 2020 election, according to her LinkedIn profile. She joined The Hill following a stint with the Chicago-Sun Times. In addition to her work as a “race and politics reporter,” she hosted the podcast The Switch Up, where she took “a deep dive into the intersection of race and politics” and interviewed “those who have been directly impacted by systemic injustice, such as Philonise and Keeta Floyd, brother and sister-in-law of George Floyd.”
Daniels also sits on the board of the Washington Association of Black Journalists, the group that faced an internal revolt for inviting Trump to sit for an interview at its 2024 convention.
