Jonathan Swan

Based on Wikipedia: Jonathan Swan

The Interview That Broke the Internet

In August 2020, a journalist sat across from the President of the United States and did something that had become remarkably rare: he asked follow-up questions.

When Donald Trump declared that the pandemic was "under control," Jonathan Swan replied with a simple question that cut through the noise: "How? A thousand Americans are dying a day."

The resulting interview became a sensation not just for what was said, but for what was shown. Swan's face—cycling through confusion, disbelief, and what can only be described as existential bewilderment—became one of the most shared images of that strange pandemic summer. His expressions captured something millions of Americans were feeling as they watched their president describe mass death with the detached affect of someone reviewing quarterly sales figures.

From Sydney to the White House Press Corps

Jonathan Swan was born on August 7, 1985, in Sydney, Australia. His father, Norman Swan, was a health reporter—a biographical detail that would take on a certain poignancy when his son's most famous moment came during a global health crisis.

Swan grew up in what he describes as a "very liberal" Reform Jewish household, attending the Emanuel Synagogue. He entered journalism at twenty-five, covering politics for The Sydney Morning Herald and Fairfax Media. Even in these early years, he developed a reputation for digging up stories others had missed.

Some of these scoops were serious: exposing parliamentarians who had been abusing taxpayer funds. Others were more colorful—he once unearthed video footage of a senator hurling kangaroo feces at his brother. Australian politics, it seems, offers its own unique flavor of spectacle.

In 2014, Swan made the leap that would define his career. Through a fellowship with the American Political Science Association, he moved to Washington, D.C., initially working as a congressional aide. American politics had always fascinated him, and he saw an opportunity. After approaching several national media outlets, The Hill took a chance on the young Australian.

The Axios Years

Swan's time at The Hill was brief. In 2016, he joined a startup called Axios just before its official launch. The timing was impeccable. Donald Trump had just been elected president, and Washington was about to enter one of the most chaotic periods in modern American political history.

As a national political correspondent covering Trump's first administration, Swan became something of a scoop machine. He broke story after story: the United States' initial withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the firing of Steve Bannon as White House chief strategist. His reporting helped establish Axios as a serious player in political journalism.

But success brought scrutiny.

The Access Journalism Debate

There's an old tension in political journalism, one that predates Swan by decades. To get the best stories, you need access. To get access, you need sources to trust you. But if sources trust you too much, critics will ask whether you've become more stenographer than journalist—writing down what powerful people want you to write rather than holding them accountable.

Swan found himself at the center of this debate. Some commentators accused him of favoring "access over accountability." His articles were sometimes startlingly brief—the one announcing the Jerusalem recognition clocked in at just fifty-five words. The New York Times observed that Swan "irritates the White House, but rarely infuriates it."

There were other controversies. Swan earned as much as $25,000 per paid speaking engagement, raising questions about conflicts of interest. In September 2018, he reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had resigned—a story that turned out to be false, damaging both his reputation and Axios's credibility.

The criticism reached its peak after Swan's first Trump interview in October 2018. In a preview clip, Trump revealed plans to end birthright citizenship—the constitutional right that grants citizenship to anyone born on American soil. When Trump falsely declared that no other country had birthright citizenship, Swan said nothing. He didn't challenge, didn't correct, didn't probe.

Commentators noticed something else: Swan appeared gleeful, almost starstruck. Journalist Sam Biddle called the interview "the ne plus ultra of media toadying"—the ultimate example of journalists fawning over the powerful rather than challenging them.

A Remarkable Overcorrection

The backlash stung. Swan later admitted he regretted his performance. But what happened next is what makes his story interesting. Rather than retreating into defensive justifications, he changed.

When Swan sat down with Trump again in 2020, he was a different interviewer. The country was different too—over 100,000 Americans had died from COVID-19, and protests over the murder of George Floyd had spread to cities across the nation.

This time, Swan came prepared not just with questions but with follow-up questions. And follow-ups to those follow-ups.

When Trump said "people say," Swan immediately asked, "Which people?"

When Trump made vague claims, Swan demanded specifics: "How?" "What?" "Who?"

CNN's Daniel Dale, who had spent years cataloging Trump's false statements, noted something important about the president's typical interview strategy. Trump would make false claims in rapid succession—what Dale called a "hit-and-run" approach. Most interviewers, overwhelmed by the sheer volume, would let them pass unchallenged.

Swan didn't let them pass.

The Power of Simple Questions

What made the 2020 interview so effective wasn't rhetorical brilliance or gotcha journalism. It was something more basic: Swan kept asking elementary questions that demanded actual answers.

There's a technique in this, though it's not complicated. When someone in power makes a claim, you can challenge it directly—"That's not true"—which often leads to defensive arguments about who gets to decide what's true. Or you can simply ask them to explain further. "How do you know that?" "Can you give me an example?" "Who told you that?"

If the claim is solid, these questions are easy to answer. If it isn't, the person has to either admit they don't have evidence or start visibly fumbling.

Trump fumbled.

Journalist David Brody observed that Trump typically dominated interviews by "commandeering" them—controlling the flow of conversation so completely that interviewers became passive participants. Swan didn't let him commandeer. He kept redirecting back to the questions Trump hadn't answered.

The president appeared, in a word, unprepared. Not unprepared in the sense of not having talking points—he had plenty of those. Unprepared in the sense of not having expected anyone to ask what those talking points actually meant.

The Face That Launched a Thousand Memes

And then there were the facial expressions.

When Trump presented Swan with a set of graphs purporting to show that America was handling the pandemic well, Swan's face betrayed exactly what he was thinking. His eyebrows climbed. His mouth hung slightly open. He looked like a man watching someone try to prove that two plus two equals five using a very confident PowerPoint presentation.

These expressions became a viral internet meme almost instantly. There was something cathartic about them. For millions of Americans who had spent years watching press conferences and interviews where Trump's statements went unchallenged, Swan's face said what they had been thinking.

The interview touched on more than the pandemic. Swan pressed Trump on his unwillingness to praise the recently deceased civil rights icon John Lewis. He asked about Trump's statement that he wished Ghislaine Maxwell "well"—this after Maxwell's arrest for allegedly abetting Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking operation.

Each time, Swan's face registered what his words remained professional enough not to say.

Recognition and What Came After

The interview earned Axios the 2021 Emmy Award for Best Edited Interview. Ben Smith of The New York Times called it "the best interview of Mr. Trump's term."

Swan wasn't finished with the Trump story. Shortly before the 2020 presidential election, he revealed what he understood to be Trump's plan to claim victory regardless of the actual results. After the election, he documented Trump's efforts to overturn the outcome in a nine-part series titled "Off the Rails." That series won him the 2022 White House Correspondents' Association's Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage.

In January 2023, after six years at Axios, Swan joined The New York Times. He initially focused on congressional Republicans but now covers Trump's second administration—because history, it seems, has a sense of humor about these things.

The Art of the Follow-Up Question

Swan's career arc offers a lesson about journalism, but perhaps also about something broader.

In his early career, he was excellent at getting access and breaking news. But access without accountability produces journalism that serves the powerful more than the public. His 2018 Trump interview was the logical endpoint of that approach—an interview where the subject could say anything, true or false, without consequence.

What changed by 2020 wasn't Swan's access. He was still sitting across from the president. What changed was his willingness to treat that access as the beginning of journalism rather than its goal.

The follow-up question is not a complicated tool. It's what any curious person does in normal conversation when they don't quite understand something or when something doesn't quite add up. "Wait, what do you mean?" "How does that work?" "Who said that?"

The remarkable thing about Swan's 2020 interview isn't that he used this tool. It's that using it at all had become remarkable.

A Personal Note

Swan is married to Betsy Woodruff, also a political journalist, who works at Politico. They have two children. In 2024—eight years after arriving to cover American politics—he became an American citizen.

It's a fitting detail. The Australian who came to make sense of American politics for American audiences eventually became American himself. Whether the country makes any more sense to him now than it did when he arrived is, perhaps, a question for another interview.