How to get the response data from promise in React?

I am setting up a very basic react app, and trying to call my local host server (separate backend server), which has JSON data on it. I want to extract the data returned from the promise, but nothing I do seems to work. Here is my code:

    fetch('http://localhost:8080/posts')
    .then(function(response) {
        const items = response.json()
        console.log(items)
    })

I have tried response.json(), response.body, I tried logging the body with .then(functio(body) { console.log(body)}), response.data, response.body, but nothing works. Here is what the console prints out:

How can I take the output it is giving me, and get it in an array that I can iterate through? The "content" and "id" are what I need access to.

and FYI, the array, when i go to localhost:8080/posts in my browser is simple:

  [{"id":1,"content":"hello, this is post 1"}]

any help is appreciated, thanks!