I’ve Reported on Trump for a Decade. Here’s How I Cover Someone Who Hates Me.

As a member of the White House press corps, I’m used to long flights on Air Force One. I can usually take an Ambien and go to sleep, knowing that the president is certainly not coming back to the press cabin.

But with Donald Trump, you never know.

During his first term, after a rally out west, he came back to talk to us. Had we watched the big Democratic presidential primary debate from a few hours earlier?

No, we replied. We were at the rally with you, sir.

“I DVR’d it,” he said. “It’s up in my cabin. Do you guys want to come watch?”

Trump led us to his cabin, which other presidents definitely don’t do, where he turned on a recording. We watched as he provided WWE-like color commentary.

“Elizabeth Warren, she’s sharp. Wow, she just got Bloomberg. Oh man, he’s angry! He’s going to come back at her.”

That level of access is unprecedented—and I’ve been covering politics for over 20 years, including nearly a decade reporting on the White House. It sounds exciting and prestigious. In some ways, it is. But it wasn’t something I personally aspired to. Once a candidate gets to the White House, they feel controlled and scripted.

Freewheeling campaigns are more fun. I can get up close to politicians, meet them. See how they interact with voters. How they treat their staff. How they treat their staff when they think no one is looking. And what they’re like when they’re dropped into odd situations, like having to pet a butter cow at the Iowa State Fair then going to a Baptist church in South Carolina or town hall in New Hampshire.

I happened to cover Donald Trump’s first campaign. Then, he happened to win.

During Trump’s first term, I never knew when I was going to turn the corner and see him. Sometimes, he’d even talk to me, which is why it was so important to be in the West Wing.

It was chaotic and disorganized. I might be waiting outside of then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus’s office to ask about a story, and suddenly Sean Spicer storms in, shouting. Then, Steve Bannon might come by and pull one of them out. Just by hanging around, I’d watch a whole scene of policy debates and clashing personalities.

But Trump Two is different than Trump One.

Traditionally, the press pool includes all the wires, one TV unit, radio, a bunch of photographers, and two print poolers. This administration has demanded to control the makeup. They just kicked out the Wall Street Journal because they didn’t like its reporting on Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump gives the press unprecedented access, like when dozens of reporters watched him erupt on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February.

That’s because Trump now understands how to use the levers of power. He’s stacked his White House with true loyalists. In the first term, there were competing factions like Bannon MAGA guys, RNC folks, and globalists. Now, everyone is on the same page. Everyone is MAGA. It’s more disciplined and better organized.

However, Trump lets the press witness all manner of things. Like that blow-up with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February. Trump had a very significant policy debate, and then eruption, while dozens of reporters crowded into the Oval Office and watched. That would never happen in a different administration. If it got that heated, it would be behind closed doors.

To be a good political reporter today—in addition to being a hard worker, a good writer, and well-sourced—you need to be a Trump psychologist. I’ve been getting my Ph.D. in Trump since 2015. It’s a constant learning experience.

The president, as has been well-documented, regularly says things that aren’t true. And some of the people around him do the same. It’s certainly not the only White House to spin. But if Trump says something never happened, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It might mean it happened, but he doesn’t want you to know about it.

My job is to convey truth to readers, to be as accurate and objective as possible. In the Trump White House, I take a kaleidoscopic approach. If there’s a meeting in the Oval Office with eight people, I talk to as many of those eight as I can. And then I talk to as many of the people those eight people talked to. Everyone has a different memory, perspective, agenda, or spin. Only by putting all those pieces together can I figure out what happened.

My colleague Michael Scherer and I wrote the cover story on Trump for the June 2025 issue of The Atlantic. We talked to him twice, once on the phone and then once in person for an hour in the Oval Office.

During that process, Trump attacked us by name on Truth Social several times. Even the morning we went into the Oval Office for our interview along with our boss, Jeffrey Goldberg, he posted that he was letting us come in to interview him, but that we’re unfair, radical liberal reporters. You would think the president, who just trashed us, was going to bring us into the Oval Office to berate us.

The interview was originally supposed to last 20 minutes. One of his staff members mentioned that about 30 minutes in. The president said, “No, no, they can stay longer.” And we got an hour.

He very clearly doesn’t like us. Why did he talk to us for an hour? Why would he even pick up a phone call from The Atlantic? It’s because he views everything as a transaction. He’s almost always trying to solve the immediate problem in front of him. He was trying to get us to understand his point of view.

Trump holds a press conference in the White House Press Briefing Room.

I’m not the only journalist he’s called out by name, but starting in 2016, he called me out once or twice at big rallies. He tweeted about stories I had written, attacking them and me by name. The first time or two, it was jarring and disconcerting. Over time, I’ve built up a thicker skin. It just lands different.

I still have concerns, of course. The only thing I care about is that my family is protected. But beyond that, I let it roll off my back. And I think that was probably the steepest learning curve from 2015 to now. I know my reporting is solid. I know I’m not a radical left-wing lunatic. The president can say whatever he wants. That’s not going to affect how I do my job.