OA: Once Trump won the primary, you embedded with Mike Pence.
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I had to figure out how it worked and who the important people were and how to get them to talk to me and how to write about them fairly. And two, what we do as reporters is form relationships and build sources, and we often switch beats, so in that sense it was no different. But there are two things to remember: One, every reporter-not just me-was more or less starting from the same place. And had I been put on another Republican campaign, be it Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, I would’ve been starting with the same baseline relationships. So when I moved on to covering Jeb Bush this cycle, there were a lot of the same people from the Romney world. But the good thing about that, as you mentioned, is that these were traditional operatives. And I felt like, ironically, I'd finally hit my stride and had situational awareness and really great sourcing in October 2012-you know, a month before he lost the election. What was it like trying to cultivate sources in this world where everyone was an outsider?ĪP: It’s funny: the first campaign I covered was Mitt Romney in 2012, which I loved. OA: One of the things that was unique about the Trump campaign was that he didn’t really pull from the pool of typical Republican operatives that most reporters know well. One of the reasons I love covering it so much is because I think it has the flavor of a traditional campaign, with larger than life personalities, a healthy amount of leaks, a bit of color, and-dare I say-chaos, to keep things interesting. But I can say that this White House certainly does not feel that way. I don’t actually know firsthand, because this is the first White House I’ve covered. OA: It seems like the common criticism is that the White House is so tightly contained that it can be tough to get interesting, colorful reporting.ĪP: Right. And I always felt like if I were to cover a White House, the way I’d want to do it is only the first year or two of an administration, when it still had some of that freewheeling chaos that makes campaigns so appealing. Actually, I always felt like campaigns were a lot more fun. I never really wanted to cover the White House.
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OA: Have you always wanted to cover the White House?ĪP: No. So until I left, it didn’t even occur to me that I was being filmed, or in the background of a shot. Apparently that’s just what I always look like-I actually heard from so many people, including an ex, who said, “Hey, that’s the exact expression you made when I asked you to prom.”īut the other thing is, it was a good reminder that-when you’re in the briefing room-everyone is a bit player, even when your focus is only on the person at the podium. OA: Did you have any clue that the GIF from the briefing room would go viral?ĪP: No, no clue at all.