Nicolle Wallace returns to ‘Deadline: White House’ after family leave

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MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace has returned to “Deadline: White House” after being off since November 15, 2023.

Wallace and her husband, Michael Schmidt, announced the birth of a daughter via surrogate late last year and that she would be taking some time off work to spend more time with her expanded family.

Her return wasn’t a surprise — she phoned into the show on Friday, Feb. 23, 2024, to let viewers know she’d be returning at the start of the next week.

Alicia Menendez and others have been filling in for Wallace on the two-hour show, which airs from 4 to 6 p.m. eastern.

“Well, hello there, everybody. It’s four o’clock in New York, I’ve missed saying that,” said the anchor at the top of her show Feb. 26, 2024. “It is so very, very, very good to be back with you. I have missed everyone.”

“Everyone is perfect,” she said about her family. “As you know, because you have missed your babies by sitting in that chair so that I can be with my babies for the last three months. It’s the older one that really milks the most out of maternity leave — the baby is always happy that I’m here. It’s been awesome to be with both of them.”

Now that Wallace is back to work, MSNBC is also launching a new series called “American Autocracy,” a reference to “something the whole country is grappling with,” referring to presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

Wallace has worked in the communications office during George W. Bush’s administration and also worked on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

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She also spent a season as a co-host of ABC’s “The View,” taking on the role of a more conservative viewpoint. Since joining MSNBC, she has largely denounced Donald Trump and the MAGA movement as not representative of a Republican party she wants to associate with.

“Deadline: White House” is one of MSNBC’s strongest performing shows under Wallace. It was originally a one-hour affair, but the network expanded it in 2020. 

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