Inside Trump’s ‘New Media’ Press Corps: Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich on the Importance of Tough Questions

Jacqui Heinrich calls it as she sees it. As one of Fox News’ senior White House Correspondents, co-anchor of The Sunday Briefing, and the future president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, she has earned a reputation for asking tough, necessary questions — regardless of who’s in power.

“I build rapport no matter who is in office by approaching my job with integrity,” Heinrich told Mediate founding editor Colby Hall on this week’s episode of Press Club. That approach has guided her across the administrations of both former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump.

“When I’m in the chair, I’m asking questions that I really want an answer to,” she said. “I don’t use that time performatively. And I think that goes a long way, because they know from dealing with me that I ask questions genuinely. I’ll never do a ‘gotcha’ question.”

Heinrich described the briefing room as a place where competing incentives sometimes collide — legacy outlets, regional reporters, wire services, talk-radio hosts, and now, under Trump, “new media” invitees. Some show up armed with substantive questions, while others offer up queries that land closer to presidential flattery.

Heinrich takes those changes in stride. “As long as they’re not taking the space that traditional media sits in,” she said, “I think viewers can understand when they’re getting news from a journalist versus an influencer — at least I hope so. So I don’t have a problem with it.”

But she is unequivocal on one point: access should never be conditioned on presidential approval. Speaking about the White House’s February clash with the Associated Press over its refusal to use the term “Gulf of America,” Heinrich was direct.

“We don’t want the White House to restrict who can come into the pool based on whether or not the president is happy with that outlet,” she said. “You want to make sure you have a press corps asking the leader of the free world questions that need to be asked, and that there isn’t a fear that if you do your job, you will be punished for it.”

Heinrich is all too familiar with being the target of a Truth Social rant from the president. In March, after she questioned whether it was “appropriate” to showcase a Tesla in front of the press on White House grounds, Trump posted, “I watched Jacqui Heinrich from Fox over the weekend, and I thought she was absolutely terrible. She should be working for CNN, not Fox.”

In August, after his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Heinrich said on-air that the Russian leader had “steamrolled” Trump. Despite a wave of conservative criticism, Heinrich didn’t flinch.

“I don’t really think about it,” she said. “I know I’ve done my job. I stand by what I said. I’d say it again. I put it in context… I’m sure it’s not the last time I’ll upset this president or another.”

Even when the information she’s challenging is factually shaky — such as Trump’s continued assertions that gas and grocery prices are down when data shows otherwise — she avoids reactive fact-checking in favor of deeper reporting.

“My job, no matter who the president is, is to figure out: What evidence is he pointing to?” Heinrich said. “And use that to determine: Are people around him giving him good information? What does this say about the president? What does it say about what we’re not seeing?”

She went on to address text messages — made public in early 2023 as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News — that revealed internal criticism of her reporting on Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen 2020 election.

Yet Heinrich learned about those texts only long after the fact. “I didn’t even know it was going on,” she said. “I have been blessed to be able to do my job the way that I want to do it… I think [Fox] obviously likes what I’m doing. My key card still works.”

Amid ongoing criticism that the network’s opinion shows blur the lines between commentary and reporting, Heinrich made clear she sees room for both. “My job is my job. Their job is their job. One doesn’t negate the other,” she said, emphasizing that her reporting remains consistent regardless of the hour or host she appears with.

Her path at Fox now includes a new chapter as co-anchor of The Sunday Briefing, alternating weeks with fellow senior White House Correspondent Peter Doocy. Their dynamic, she said, works because they’re opposites. “We’re complementary. We bring different things to the table.”

With her new show, Heinrich’s journalistic intentions remain unchanged. And those intentions, she said, can be summed up simply: “To ask questions and reflect things as they are to the best of my ability, fairly and consistently.”

You can subscribe to Press Club on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Read a transcript of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Colby Hall: You have developed a reputation as being an arbiter of tough questions, regardless of who’s in the White House. And I say that as a compliment. Not everyone who’s in the White House Correspondents’ Association or in the briefing room is consistently asking tough questions of the Biden administration or the Trump administration. How is it you manage that — sticking to the stories you want at the risk of alienating, whether it’s Karine Jean-Pierre or Karoline Leavitt?

Jacqui Heinrich: Well, I think that’s the job — that’s all it is. It’s what we signed up to do. I think I build rapport no matter who is in office by approaching my job with integrity. I always like to ask the questions I need to ask, make sure I’ve done my due diligence, put in the requests, get the background. When you do your reporting, make sure it has context and nuance.

And then when I’m in the chair, I’m asking questions that I really want an answer to. I don’t use that time performatively. And I think that goes a long way, because they know from dealing with me that I ask questions genuinely. I’ll never do a “gotcha” question. It’s just not my brand. And so I think it’s easy because it’s the only way I can be: approaching my job from how I actually am rather than putting on some sort of show for it. I think that would be a lot harder.

We prefer, at Mediaite, the show because it’s what tends to get clicks.

I’m sure you do.

Now, walk me through the process — because I remember there was a dust-up within the Biden administration where their comms team was criticized by some for asking reporters what they were going to ask about. But it seems like Karoline Leavitt and Steven Cheung do the same thing. Walk us through — pretend we’re morons — and don’t understand how that works. Before a briefing, I can’t imagine you submit questions, but it seems reasonable that they would want to know the subjects that they should be prepared for. How does that work?

I think the dust-up you’re referring to was about a press conference, not a press briefing. And that is a totally different beast. I still don’t know how they handle that because they never called on me for the whole four years.

This was the Biden administration, right?

The Biden administration, yeah. They never actually called on me. So I have no idea how they approached that. But with the briefings, both administrations — Biden and Trump — just sort of go around to the workspaces for the press and say, “What topics are you interested in?” And we’ll generally say something like the economy or Iran.

It’s not an in-depth preview of what you’re going to get at, but just to ensure the press secretary is aware of the subject matter and, if something comes out of left field, maybe she needs to refer to a report that has come out. Certainly, if there was some really obscure thing I was going to ask about, I might supply them with the article it comes from.

Right.

But nobody submits questions in advance. I think it doesn’t yield good answers. So it’s not in anyone’s interest to do that.

It sometimes drives me crazy watching — there are three big stories in the news, and both administrations would ask people in the back of the room, understandably, but those reporters often ask questions that I find of little interest.

And I’m curious: do you ever feel that dynamic where momentum is building around a topic and someone asks about a bridge to Alaska? Is there a palpable groan in the room? How pure are the journalistic standards? Do people consider that as sacred, and recognize and respect that those questions may be interesting to the outlet that they’re representing? Or is there growing frustration with some individuals in the group?

I think the room is diverse. You have a lot of different kinds of outlets — TV, radio, print, wires, regional reporters. They all have different topics of interest to their audiences. So we expect different kinds of questions from different parts of the room.

The only time it gets frustrating is if you’re in a spray in the Oval Office and the president answers a question that begs a follow-up, and then it gets derailed by someone asking something off-topic. When you’re in the pool, you expect the pool to act on behalf of the rest of the press corps that’s not in the room and use their time with the president to deliver those answers. But in the briefing room, we all understand that each outlet has its priorities. It’s their time to ask questions for their outlet. Your time in the pool is much different. And we can always go to lower press or upper press to finish getting answers after the briefing.

I don’t want to put you in a tough spot, but that’s a perfect segue into the addition of the new media chairs under this administration. There’s a broad spectrum. There’s Axios and other reputable outlets, but also occasionally Tim Pool or Brian Glenn — who I’m sure are lovely people personally — but they don’t appear committed to journalistically sound questions. They often reiterate White House-approved talking points. That occurs not just in the briefing but in Oval Office sprays. I call it the “Brian Glennification” of the press briefing.

You’re journalistically sound. As a board member of the WHCA, is it tricky that these individuals don’t appear to abide by traditional journalistic standards, or do you see it as a strength that represents how people think?

I think it’s important to bear in mind that the Biden administration also brought in influencers. The only difference is that they did that in separate briefings. They’d have cabinet secretaries or the press secretary give their own briefing to influencers. And we in the traditional press corps wondered, “Are we missing out on something?”

So I don’t really mind that this administration has given up a staff seat to do that because we’re all in the room for it. They’re not taking away from our traditional press. If they were replacing someone in our Brady briefing room seats, I’d feel differently. But this is a staff seat that wasn’t regularly used. I thought it was smart of them to show they have their finger on the pulse of where people get news these days: from an evolving media landscape.

Which people get their news from those people?

I think they’re tapping into the truth that a lot of people get their news on their phones rather than through subscriptions or TV.

But the Meidas bros aren’t included in this.

The what?

The Meidas guys. You don’t see left-leaning influencers in the new media seats. You see, largely, individuals like Breitbart — successful outlets, but again, they don’t necessarily abide by the journalistic standards that Fox News or The New York Times do.

Does that surprise you, though? Under Biden, you had left-leaning influencers come in.

But not in the briefing room. And I’d say they’re different things, right? You make a salient point — you wondered what you were missing. And I would argue that a lot of reporters in the briefing room under Biden represented legacy brands that leaned left, even if they wouldn’t admit that. But I do think the Trump administration has taken that loophole to an exponentially greater level. Brian Glenn is a guy who gets questions all the time in sprays and will openly challenge Volodymyr Zelenskyy about his wardrobe. That seems off.

I hear your point. My perspective is: they’re going to do what they’re going to do. As long as they’re not taking the space that traditional media sits in, as long as they’re not taking away from our ability to ask questions, I think viewers can understand when they’re getting news from a journalist versus an influencer — at least I hope so. So I don’t have a problem with it.

And what’s the alternative — that they’re going to replace all of us? I don’t have an issue with them dedicating a staff seat to their new media venture and figuring out who they’re letting in that day. It’s a lot of work to take in requests, handle what they’re going to ask, and get them credentialed for the day. If they want to take that work on, fine — as long as it doesn’t take away from us in the traditional media being able to put our questions to these officials and do our jobs, I’ve got no issue with it.

If it doesn’t get in the way — that’s a fair answer. I’m not one for gotcha questions, but here’s a gotcha question.

OK.

What do you call the body of water south of the United States?

The body of water south of the United States?

It’s the Gulf of…

In my reporting? Or in —

I’m just making a larger point. It’s my lead into the AP dust-up with Trump, who cut AP out of access because they refused to call it the “Gulf of America.” You were pretty vocal about that. Explain your thoughts.

Well, the issue we have had is that — and this is ongoing now in court, there’s a case.

It’s a fluid story.

It’s a fluid story. Our position is that we don’t want the White House to restrict who can come into the pool based on whether or not the president is happy with that outlet, because you don’t want that to be a standard that can be weaponized by any administration. That was the message I was trying to share. If you’re cheering us on and you want the White House to take over control of the pool and choose who can come in based on who they like — sure, there might be a lot of conservative people cheering us on today, but those same conservative people will be furious when President AOC kicks every conservative-leaning outlet out of the press pool.

We have to bear in mind that these decisions set precedents. You want to make sure you have a press corps asking the leader of the free world questions that need to be asked, and that there isn’t a fear that if you do your job, you will be punished for it. That’s the other part of it — the intimidation factor. You don’t want that to be felt — that if you ask a question that’s going to upset the president, somehow your access is going to be revoked.

Access is a big thing. It’s human nature to want to maintain and manage access, but the role of a journalist is to ask the questions that don’t want to be answered. In the Biden administration, you made news for asking difficult questions of Karine Jean-Pierre about what appeared to be a very clear cognitive decline at the end of Biden’s presidency. To their credit, they kept calling on you, but that had to be awkward and tough. What is it like in the room when you’re going after a story that somebody doesn’t want you to ask about? Is it tense? And how do you manage that relationship without losing access?

Is it a fair question? Is it not a fair question? I always try to pose my questions in a way that is fair. I’m not emotional about how I ask things. I’m not trying to put someone in a bad spot. I try to bring examples to refer to, to make clear to a viewer why it’s important that this be asked.

The kids call them receipts.

Receipts — to make clear that I’m not just trying to smear you. And I’m not. I don’t think that does anything. That serves up candy. I want to drive the conversation forward. My job is to unveil, to the greatest extent that I can, the fullness of the truth and put that in context so people make decisions for themselves on how they feel about it. I don’t really care if they don’t like it as long as it’s a fair question.

That’s a good answer. Similarly, you’ve asked very tough questions of the Trump administration and have, I think, courageously reported things — for example, after the Trump-Putin summit that was cut short, you called it like you saw it, and said that the mood in the room felt like Putin had steamrolled Trump.

That led President Trump to call you out specifically on Truth Social, which I suspect is a mixed blessing. It’s a badge of journalistic honor, but he’s also got a lot of loyal fans. How do you feel when the president — the leader of the free world — calls you out publicly? Does it make you gulp? Freak out? Or do you think, “I’m not here to please him”?

I don’t really think about it. That was a snippet of an eight-minute hit I had done that had a lot more information. What I said was that Putin came in and steamrolled. He steamrolled the press conference. He went straight to the podium, started talking before Trump, and rattled off his greatest hits of why the war was justified. We’re all in the room thinking, “What’s going on here?” And then they didn’t take questions. There was a lot more there than what the president reacted to, and how people understood that. But I know I’ve done my job. I stand by what I said. I’d say it again. I put it in context.

Well, it seemed entirely accurate.

Right. With the fullness of what I reported, which is always what I point back to, like, “Do you have an issue with my reporting?” If the president or someone else has an issue, my first question is: “What did I do wrong? Did I forget to ask something? Did I frame something inaccurately?” If they can’t answer that and they just don’t like what I said, I don’t spend time thinking about it. I’m sure it’s not the last time I’ll upset this president or another. My job is just to call balls and —

Your job is to upset presidents.

Well, it’s to ask questions and reflect things as they are to the best of my ability, fairly and consistently.

100 percent.

My feelings about something aren’t important. Neither are someone else’s feelings about something. I really compartmentalize and focus on my job.

I’ll say this as a compliment: You have a terrific reputation in the political media world, as does your co-host Peter Doocy, for asking tough questions of both administrations. Fox News is enjoying a really amazing time. It’s dominating the ratings — lapping the field. It’s got a robust streaming platform and is making more money than ever. Primetime was the top-rated television show over all TV this summer, which is crazy — or maybe it says a lot about broadcast.

There does seem to be, sometimes, not a division, but a slight tension between the news side and opinion hosts whose job is to present analysis that is very much aligned. Sean Hannity has told me a bunch of times that he’s a proud conservative and owns it. Good for him. But do you feel tension between reporting the news and speaking truth to power, and a primetime lineup that is largely directed toward an increasingly pro-Trump or right-of-center audience?

No, I think there’s space for both things. I’ve been on those shows doing straight news reports whenever there’s breaking news. I’ve done hits for Jesse and Sean, and Laura. My reporting is the same as it would be for Special Report or America’s Newsroom. My job is my job. Their job is their job. One doesn’t negate the other, I don’t think.

I hate to bring this up, and I know you’ve spoken about this, but in the Dominion filings, there were texts suggesting that you, basically, were pushing back against what I think were Trump’s baseless allegations of a rigged or stolen election. There’s no evidence, in my mind, of anything that was enough to change the results of 2020. Some hosts weren’t pleased with your reporting. What were your thoughts on that? No one wants to see their texts out in the open. Things that you share privately are private. I say a lot of crazy, inappropriate stuff to friends of mine without context, and no, I don’t really mean that — I’m just teasing that guy. How did you react to that being part of the news cycle?

I didn’t even know it was going on. I didn’t find out about it until years later, when a media reporter asked me. In the time between, I had been promoted multiple times. I’ve never had anyone tell me how to do my job. There was no evidence that anything in those texts was happening, as far as how I was feeling it.

So sure, I’ve seen the reports, but obviously, it didn’t trickle down to me as a directive: “You must do this, or that.” I have been blessed to be able to do my job the way that I want to do it. I’ve been supported in that and promoted over and over again for that. I continue to work here for that reason. I think that they obviously like what I’m doing. My key card still works.

Key card still works! You’re moving up the food chain, and that’s great. A lot of people were delighted by the announcement of you and Peter Doocy alternating weeks co-hosting The Sunday Briefing. Congratulations. How did that come about, and what is the mission of the show?

Thank you. It’s very exciting. There’s no shortage of ways to fill an hour talking about the White House. We could probably do three hours if we had the time. There’s so much news every week. You can take it in any direction. Peter does his show one way. I do mine another. We’re complementary. We do different things, and that’s why we make a great team.

He definitely has a Steve Doocy fun-loving, bird-on-my-hair Halloween costume vibe, whereas you seem just as fun and interesting, but more news-based or interview-based.

That’s charitable of you. I think I’m more of a nerd.

Nerds are cool.

Peter has a much more fun personality, actually.

Well, he’s a Doocy.

I’d rather be poring over a stack of legal documents than doing a fun Halloween segment. But that doesn’t always translate to TV. So I take pointers from Peter on what would be fun to watch. We’re complementary. We bring different things to the table.

How closely do you coordinate and work together — not just on the show but in general? You alternate in the briefing room, and you’re on the same network. I assume you don’t want to completely overlap with each other, but it seems like he’s an amiable, collaborative guy — as are you. What’s that relationship like?

It’s great. We work in a booth about the size of this stage. You can’t stand up without hitting someone, and there are five of us in there every day. It’s close quarters. We have a great relationship. Again, we’re complementary. Neither one of us is trying to be the other. It’s just not our style, so I think it comes naturally.

What would you say were your finest moments on those shows so far?

Probably landing big interviews like Zelenskyy and Netanyahu.

It seems like getting those names has a lot to do with your reputation, but it also seems like Fox is the default network watched by President Trump. When you’re on air, how much does that come to mind? I watch some Fox News programming, and think, “Wow, this seems really targeted to the commander-in-chief.” I’m not suggesting that that’s what you think, but does that come to mind? Do you manage that in any way, or do you just do the show that you want to do?

No, I just do the show that I think needs to happen. I think it actually happens in reverse, where something will happen later in the week and I’ll think, “Oh, he watched on Sunday.” It’s more of an after-the-fact thing.

Is it fair to criticize the president for watching a lot of TV? He’s a media genius. He knows how to manage narratives impossibly well, for better and worse. And yet, he is spending a lot of time with the TV on. Is he always watching? How does that work? What’s the story within the White House?

I don’t know. I think that’s a question for someone who has a blue badge. I don’t actually know how much TV he’s watching. He’s a producer at heart, so it benefits us in one way — we get a lot of access to him. He obviously is familiar with television and knows how to work around a camera. That works for us in the press. We get a lot more access than we did under Biden, that’s for sure.

He’s very good at stagecraft — not just in the Oval Office but at rallies. As a result, he knows how to create a shiny, new object for the media to chase. One challenge we have at Mediaite is that we try to answer “What have I missed?” I worry sometimes that we play into this weird tactic of a fire hose of information, insults, Truth Social posts, and bombing of boats in the Gulf of America.

There seems to be this need to triage stories, for you personally on your show, but also for the network. How does a media outlet manage all these different noteworthy events when there are only 24 hours in a day, and there are only 45 minutes in your Sunday show? How do you prioritize that? And in a way, is Trump taking advantage of a media that’s overwhelmed by so much news?

I think it’s always somewhat obvious. You structure your storytelling on what affects people the most and what’s important for people to know about today. You go top-down from there. It’s always a moving target. I think the real challenge is that you can have a really good idea of what is important at the beginning of the day, and that might change by noon.

It happens every day. It’s crazy. Massive, the biggest news of the year, and two days later, people are like, “Oh, remember that?” 

Like I said, we could dedicate three hours on a Sunday to this administration because there’s so much to cover.

It does seem to be exhausting, and he’s really good at that. When you hear the president say things — for example, I thought Laura Ingraham did a wonderful job in the interview that aired over the last two nights, and she earned remarkable praise from some of the most left-leaning influencers on social media by pressing him on the economy. He won in 2024, he openly said, on groceries and gas prices. And nine, ten months later — maybe it’s not fair to him to say that you’d expect a huge difference — but a lot of economists argue that the tariff policy is hurting the economy and making things more expensive. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts said as much in that hearing.

When you hear the president just flatly say that gas prices are down and the price of eggs is down, and you know in your heart that they’re not, how do you react to that? How do you push back in a way that isn’t going to upset him? Here’s a guy who just seems to be willing a narrative into truth, even if the facts don’t support it.

I think the president — and this was true with Biden also — they’re getting that information from somewhere.

Sycophants?

No. With Biden, for instance, he’d say, “We’re winning in the polls.” And you’d ask, “What polls?” And he’d point to polls that don’t meet our standards. But it’s coming from somewhere. My job, no matter who the president is, is to figure out: What evidence is he pointing to?

Right.

And use that to determine: Are people around him giving him good information? What does this say about the president? What does it say about what we’re not seeing? I don’t flat-out reject it when I hear it, to anything. That runs a risk with any president — just saying, “That’s not true,” dismissing it, and immediately going to find evidence to counter it.

I always approach my job with a question mark. What is this? What does he mean? And when you get the response, that tells you a lot more than just going to bat with the administration and saying, “I’m going to fact-check this.” It’s more helpful to tell the audience: “They’re saying this because of this.” And then they can decide, “Is this true?” “Is he not getting the rest of the information?” “Why is he doing it this way?” This is not particular to Trump, but for anybody.

Every president, it seems, eventually recedes into a bubble of advisors who protect him. You’re always going to be criticized, so I understand that inclination to a degree, but inevitably it turns into what I call the bubble of sycophancy. And I think we’ve seen that in almost every administration. From your vantage point in the White House, who are Trump’s closest advisors? Obviously, Susie Wiles, Stephen Miller — are there others who you think have his ear? Or is Trump more rogue and doing his own thing?

It depends on the topic. With foreign policy, Marco Rubio plays a big role. JD Vance plays a big role. Steve Witkoff can play a big role. Susie is important. It varies based on the subject matter.

This administration seems way more professionally run than the first for a number of reasons. Familiarity — Trump’s basic understanding of how DC works, how the White House works, and four years of time spent trying to figure that out. But also, a much higher level of professionals. Reince Priebus was a professional but not necessarily a “Trump guy” — he became one. It seems like Trump has now found professionals aligned with his agenda. Is that fair? Do you feel that, in the White House, they run a better operation than reports suggest?

I think they used their four years off fully. You saw the 200 or so executive orders he signed on day one. A lot of them haven’t been struck down in court because they’re buttoned up. They were working those four years.

I want to return to picking stories. This morning, this bombshell story of emails from Jeffrey Epstein was released by the House Democrats on the Oversight Committee. It’s gotten wall-to-wall coverage across a lot of news outlets. Fox hasn’t covered that. You can’t speak for the network and editorial decisions, but I’m curious if those sorts of decisions make your job any more challenging? Because this seems to be a big story that everyone is talking about, and Fox News programs have thus far, as of this morning, not covered it.

I’d push back on the idea that there’s overarching guidance from the network to cover or not cover something. I don’t think that’s true. I think that each show makes its own decisions about what it’s going to cover. I make the same calls with what I’m going to ask in the briefing room. I can ask whatever I want. Sometimes I’ll ask about the biggest story of the day if it matters a lot. Sometimes I won’t, if there’s something higher on the list. There’s no notion that my job is made harder because earlier shows haven’t covered something. We’re in a government shutdown right now — it could end today. I’m sure you might see a blip of that on Special Report. They usually try to get things on that haven’t necessarily led the day. I won’t promise that on behalf of the show, but the point is that each show makes decisions on coverage individually.

Bret does a good job of —

And they’re steered by what matters to people.

Right, and every show has its own point of view. Why mess with success, right? It does curry some criticism, but that’s a great answer. Not everyone wants to hear the same news, and it’s a fair reply. You are recently engaged and set to be married next year, I’ve learned. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Your fiancé is a Republican member of Congress, and immediately, people were like, “That shows bias.” You’ve addressed that, but I would love to give you a fair spot because I don’t quite get the questions or concerns. So, is there a conflict for you being eventually betrothed to a Republican member of Congress?

I don’t think so. I don’t cover him. Anything he’s close to, I don’t cover — which sometimes is annoying because I have to really protect that and take a giant step back. But I would not put my reputation — for which I’ve worked so hard for so long, to do my job with a lot of integrity — at risk. So you put a lot of distance. I don’t think there’s controversy on its face.

Brian didn’t ask me out on a date until I’d been covering the White House for five months. I met him covering Capitol Hill, but I had only known him in public settings. We’d go out to dinner with other people, and we kept the conversation strictly to work. So I was very surprised when he asked me on a date. I was shocked that it was a date. Because he didn’t know anything about me personally. I was like, “Oh!”

So there’s the headline: “Congressman Has No Clue About the DC Media World.”

He didn’t! Not when he asked me on a date. But I immediately went to my bosses and said, “Can I even say yes to this?”

And they said, “No, how dare you.”

They said, “You don’t cover him, so you don’t need our permission. Do you want to go?” And I said, “Maybe. Let me think about it.” And so I kept him hanging for a little while, while I went through all the proper channels. He was very patient.

I smell a rom-com. Maybe an eight-part series on Apple TV.

Oh God, I hope not.

But it does suggest that — and I think this is obvious, but some people label it as a criticism of the deep state — DC is a one-industry town. Everyone goes to the same events and parties. A lot of people know the same people. Naturally, there’s cross-pollination. It’s not just you and your fiancé. There are lobbyists, members of Congress, media people. You all go to the same parties — the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It’s a lot.

Yeah. I don’t think I’m the first or the last. The thing you have to protect is making sure you’re not dating someone you cover. That would be a real conflict of interest. But this was not that, and it never has been.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a thing. I didn’t go last year because I felt like it was a weird time to go to a black tie affair for a variety of reasons. I also find that it’s exhausting, and not as much fun as it once was. The novelty has worn off for me. There’s a pretty strong assault on First Amendment rights, and there’s something distasteful to me about members of the press walking a red carpet. Do you feel that the Correspondents’ Dinner, in its most recent iteration, has outlived its utility? Why are journalists walking a red carpet?

Well, it’s not just a dinner for journalists. It’s a scholarship fundraiser. We raise money to send the next generation of journalists to school. We remind each other of the work we’ve done in service of the First Amendment. It’s an opportunity to roast and be roasted. I think it should be fun. It’s been maybe a little political the last few years. Hopefully, we can get it back to a place where it’s all in good fun.

Do you think Trump will ever return?

I hope so. Maybe bribe him with Andrea Bocelli or something.

You think that’s the guy?

I don’t know. I’m trying to think who he’d show up for.

He says he loves Carrot Top. Carrot Top is a wildly hilarious — you don’t even know!

I do!

You do know Carrot Top?

Yeah. With the hair and the long leggings.

Yeah! You’re a Carrot Top fan.

It’s the Botox. I’m older than I look.

It is a little freaky. Last question: Who, historically, are your favorite or standout White House reporters — people you admire, not necessarily emulate — but who influenced your career and your role in the White House press corps today?

I don’t know if they’ve influenced me in the sense that I try to emulate them. As a principal, I don’t ever try to be like someone else — I think that would be exhausting. But I always really admired people who have a deep understanding of history. George Condon is one of the best at that. You can ask him a question and he’ll give you a really in-depth answer. I just really value that about him.

Also, Kelly O’Donnell — she’s another great custodian of our press corps. I think it’s really valuable when someone who’s done the job a long time can say, “This is how it was different under this president,” or tell newcomers to the beat how something normally goes and to be on guard for deviations. It’s just valuable.

You didn’t think about Mediaite’s Colby Hall at all in that answer? Jacqui, it has been so great chatting with you. Thank you so much for taking some occasionally tough but fair questions — you acquitted yourself wonderfully. Good luck with your show, good luck with your marriage, and I look forward to seeing you in the briefing room.