Covering Trump: War Stories from the White House Press Corps

During the four years I covered the Trump White House, I continually reached for the brass ring – an exclusive interview with the President of the United States.

It took four press secretaries and more than three and a half years to score. The one-on-one lasted four and a half minutes.

But then, the scene was different – not the Oval Office, but a packed indoor rally in Henderson, Nevada. It was the worst set up for a one-on-one you could imagine – but I’ll always be grateful to the people who made it happen.

The timing was different as well – mere weeks from the Nov. 3, 2020 election. Already, Trump was claiming the November election was “rigged.”

Episode five, Covid Calls, goes back to the early days of 2020 when America confronted a great unknown, a plague that eventually would take more than a million American lives.

The country did not set aside partisan differences in the face of a scary new enemy. Some stayed at home. Others scoffed at the threat. Trump delivered a vaccine in record time.

Relive the lock down, the mask controversies, the waves of positive Covid tests that walloped the West Wing. California locked up and Trump still held rallies. It was, after all, an election year.

During the four years I covered the White House, I went around the world with Donald Trump – from Riyadh to Singapore and Warsaw to Las Vegas. I witnessed Trump breaking the presidential travel playbook on four continents. I was there for the tarmac pageantry that fed Trump’s ego. I was there when POTUS stomped all over diplomatic niceties as other world leaders watched helplessly.

I was in Singapore for Trump’s first summit with North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un, and I rode in presidential motorcades and flew on Air Force One.

Join me, but first, hang on. It’s a bumpy ride.

In Episode 3, we walk together through Trump’s first day in office – he talked “American carnage,” his critics wore pussy hats – and then we wade through Trump’s record staff turnover, his bashing of aides on social media, and more bad personnel practices.

My job wasn’t simply to report on and write stories. To do that right, I had to master the logistics of the White House press team and the press corps. This episode lays out how a regional reporter maneuvered behind the big cable stars in the front rows to earn a seat and recognition in the most competitive territory in journalism. In the beginning, I spent as much time trying to figure out the mechanics of getting answers as to the answers themselves. My mission is to share with you the anguish, the drama, the logic and the occasional magic of covering the 45th president – from the back of the pack.

There have been countless books written about the Trump White House – insider accounts of palace intrigues based on whichever self-serving leaker had the ear of a well-known author. And rushed hard-covers written by newly exiting staffers looking to cash in and preserve what’s left of their ravaged reputations. You won’t get that here. This podcast is not about what one chief of staff said about an administration rival or detailed accounts of heated arguments between Donald Trump and key aides in the West Wing. It’s about what it was like to cover the Trump White House.

What was it like to cover President Donald Trump? Join Debra J. Saunders, former White House correspondent for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and fellow at the Discovery Institute as she recounts first setting foot in the Trump White House, battling for access in the 49-seat briefing room, and cadging a ride on Air Force One -among other adventures.