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- I'm Evan Smith.

She's a three-time Pulitzer Prize winning staff writer for The Atlantic.

She's Ashley Parker, this is Overheard.

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(audience clapping) Ashley Parker, welcome.

- Thanks for having me.

- Good to see you.

- Good to see you too.

- As always.

So how are things at The Atlantic?

(Ashley and audience chuckling) - They've been busy.

- They have been.

Would you, in sort of in miniature, in brief, tell the story of, we're sitting here a couple days after this happened and what the aftermath and the impact of it?

- Sure.

So, the story, of course, is that Jeff Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, he gets added to a Signal chat between President Trump's top national security people, all the way up to the vice president.

As he wrote about in The Atlantic, he sort of, originally, he thinks he must be getting punked.

So he kind of sits there and waits.

And they're having conversation that seems like the sort of conversation you would have on the Principals Committee, but he sort of cannot believe this is real until they begin sharing war plans.

You know, "The bombings in Yemen are going to start in two hours," and he sort of figures to himself, "Well, in two hours, I'll know."

So he sits in the parking lot of a grocery store, and when the bombings are supposed to begin, he goes on Twitter, now known as X, and searches for Yemen, and sees, "Oh my goodness, they're bombing Yemen."

And he realizes he has actually been added, that this is a legitimate thing, they have shared war plans with him, and he goes back to The Atlantic and he writes it up.

And the fallout has been, I mean, first, in a world in which the Trump administration is such a fire hose and it is so rare to focus sort of the entire public on one story in this day and age, it has been striking to watch how this story has just dominated the national discussion.

And then there were two hearings that felt like the sorts of hearings where the country is glued to the hearings.

And it just feels so unusual for this moment because that almost never happens.

- Their strategy has been to just, you know, sort of shock and awe, just so much stuff going on that it's hard to know, impossible to know what to pay attention to.

- Oh, yes.

It's a very deliberate strategy on the part of the Trump administration.

- And it's largely worked.

We'll talk a little bit in a second about the first two months.

But it's largely worked, and this was a rare exception to that.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- And this was also, to be clear, not part of their strategy to include.

(chuckles) - No, no, no, no, no.

- The editor of The Atlantic.

- Have him just join this actual chat.

- I mean, it was sort of shock in awe in its own way, but.

- It was definitely a shock.

- Yes.

- And I'm in awe of Jeff Goldberg, right.

But I will also say, credit to him.

I don't think he's gotten enough credit for being so responsible and patriotic in not just putting everything out there at the first.

- I was struck by that too.

I work at The Atlantic, I knew a little bit the story was coming, but when I read it as a reader, I had the reaction that this incredibly sort of objectively insane thing has fallen in his lap.

But the way he told the story, and the way he handled it responsibly, the information he chose to withhold, the reasons for withholding it, I just felt, from top to bottom, it was sort of a masterclass in what to do.

- Yeah.

Well, we could all be a little bit more like Jeff, I think, journalistically.

So, you covered candidate Trump.

You covered President Trump.

You are now, in essence, although you're a staff writer rather than a Washington Bureau reporter, you're effectively covering him again.

What is he actually like?

I think we've all gotten conditioned to see him as the character he plays on TV.

Is Trump, when you cover him on a day-to-day basis, the same as the guy we're seeing on TV?

- Yes and no.

One thing I always say that I think people would be surprised by, people who don't naturally like him, which is roughly half the country, right?

And roughly half the country loves him, right?

But for that half that does not like him, I always say, I think you would be surprised that if you happen to be in a room with him, one-on-one, or in a small group, you might find him incredibly charming and incredibly charismatic.

Because he has many superpowers, including his shamelessness, but one of them is that he is sort of this consummate salesman, this consummate host.

And I can remember, you know, there's times when I've been on Air Force 1 and the President of the United States, Donald Trump, comes back and it's, you know, "Ashley, they've taken care of you?

Are you having a good time?

Do you need a Diet Coke?"

And you sort of feel like, if you said, "Oh, yes, I'm so parched," that the president of the United States would.

- Himself?

- Yes.

Would go and serve you a Diet Coke.

So he can be incredibly charming when he chooses to be.

Which I don't know if that comes through or not.

I think it depends on your sort of partisan perspective.

- I think you have to assume that he didn't get elected without appealing personally, his personality I mean, to at least some of those people.

In other words, the people who voted for him, many presumably voted for him because of what he said he would do or because of his ideology at a high level, rather than getting down into the specifics.

But obviously, he has a certain amount of charisma to some people, right?

Like it's not totally surprising that that would be the case.

- And he just sort of has like an animalistic, visceral instinct for messaging and for what the country wants to hear.

And I think, very briefly, if you'll indulge me, when I was at The New York Times, a million years ago, in 2014 about, I did a road trip, the Old Route 60 throughout the country and interviewed 200, 300 voters.

And I came back, and there was just this sense then, this is after the financial collapse.

There was just this sense from nearly everyone I talked to, regardless of political affiliation, that they had done everything right.

They had bought a home that the bank had told them would be irresponsible for them not to buy.

They had gotten a job and worked 9 to 5 if not longer, and put money into their pension or whatever it was.

They had bought a house in the right area so their kids could go to public schools.

And that sort of the clowns, although, their language was more colorful, in New York and Washington had not played by the rules, had tanked the entire economy, no one had paid any consequences.

And these people who had done everything right and were deeply patriotic were the ones who were suffering.

And they weren't wrong.

And this was before Donald Trump was a twinkle in anyone's eye politically, right?

You knew him from the Apprentice or from New York.

But he came along and he sort of, he harnessed something to me that was already out there.

And he came up with the language, to drain the swamp.

But he understood that there was a group of people.

- He saw it.

- He saw it.

He understood there was a group of people in the country who wanted to burn it all down, and he harnessed it.

He viscerally, intuitively understood it in a way that just about no one else did.

- Right.

The haters will not like to hear this, but he will go down in history as an enormously consequential figure in American politics.

Full stop, right?

- Yes, of course.

- I mean, the people who want to deny him his legitimacy have to accept the fact that he did something, he did something once, and then more importantly, he did something a second time.

- And I think it's that second time, when you see all these people now coming and bending the knee.

I think after the first term, there was a sense, this was an aberration, you wait it out, and the Republican party goes back to being the party of Mitt Romney, John McCain, Ronald Reagan.

Choose whichever rhino you want, right?

- Well, we're sitting today in the State of Texas where Bush is a four-letter word.

Like we've seen everything.

- Yes.

- That change has happened.

It is the Donald Trump party now, no question about that.

- Yes.

And I think, and it's not just that he came back to power, but if you really pause for a moment, it's not just that he won again and he won every battleground state and he won the popular vote this time, which a lot of Republicans have not done.

But if you think of how he left that day in January in 2021, exactly two weeks after the January 6th deadly attacks on the U.S. Capitol, it is one of the most remarkable comeback stories, love him or hate him, in American politics.

- And if he went back two years, in a million years, you couldn't have imagined that.

I couldn't have imagined that.

- Go back four years, you can't imagine it.

I do think that.

- Well, I mean, if you go back to that point.

- Yeah, if you go back to that point.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- If you go back to the four year, I mean, but again, as he leaves, after this has happened, he's done.

- People didn't even show up, his loyalist didn't even show up at Andrews Air Force Base to say goodbye, it was a good riddance.

- Right.

So now we're 2-1/2 months, whatever it is.

As we sit here, almost 2-1/2 months say, what's it been like?

Like from your perspective, how have these first couple of months gone, A, and then, B, relative to expectations?

In other words, there's how they've gone, and then there's, well, is this different from what you expect?

- I mean, I think one thing that has been striking to watch, and again, a lot of the country likes what he is doing, a lot of the country hates what he is doing.

But one difference that has been so striking is he came back more confident, more certain in what he wanted to do, surrounded by the people who are true loyalists, who will enable what he wants to do, and much smarter about using the levers of power to bend Washington, the country, and the world to his will.

- Right.

And he told us, I mean, the thing is, this is Maya Angelou territory.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time, right?

Like he told us all throughout the campaign, "I'm going to do these things."

- Yeah.

- And elections have consequences.

As a journalist, how do you cover this?

How do you think about, what is your theory of the case, for covering an administration like this, understanding that as much as people call things unprecedented all the time when they're not, this actually is?

- It's a good question.

I mean, on the one hand, sort of the job and the work doesn't change.

You're trying to hold power to account, and you're trying to understand what's happening behind the scenes.

But in looking back, you sometimes think there was a hysteria in the first term that was maybe a little overwrought.

Right, the idea that Donald Trump took a sharpie and changed the path of a hurricane on a map.

Yes, he did do that.

Technically, are you allowed to draw on NOAH maps?

I think, no.

- Well, the answer, of course, is dismantle NOAH.

Right, exactly.

- Right.

But I think it is, you know, my colleagues and I have talked about this a lot.

The Post, that's where I covered the first term of Trump, was like, the first term, not everything was an 11.

And sometimes, I think the mistake that was made was everything was treated as an 11.

And so I think now it is still important to remember and report within context and in fact, for instance, that is shuttering the Department of Education and what that actually means.

- Yeah.

I mean, look, this is an administration that so far at least has been all 11s.

Has it not?

I mean, if that's the, "Well, we mistook things for 11s before."

There are a lot of 11s now.

And I think it's the rush of that the sort of fire hose turned up to the highest setting part of this.

- Yes.

- That from a journalist's perspective has got to be a little bit difficult to keep up with.

There's no off switch.

- Yes.

Oh, absolutely.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- His relationship, speaking of the press and him, his relationship with the press time seems also different and more fraught.

Lawsuits, the weaponization of the FCC.

The attempts, the plans to defund PBS and NPR.

- Voice of America.

- Yeah.

Voice of America.

The denial of access to the AP.

The wholesale taking over of the decision of who gets to cover the president from the White House Correspondents' Association.

Like all of this.

And then, of course, there are the attacks on actual journalists.

The name calling, you've been subject to this.

- Yes.

- It's not the first time this has happened, but what does that mean?

What is that like?

How are we to take, these attacks are full and frontal on journalism?

What are we to make of that?

- I mean, one of the big risks, of course, that is what we see happening has a chilling effect, right?

That reporters or institutions decide that they don't want the full weight of the White House against them, the way it is right now, against the Associated Press, or against an individual reporter.

And you're seeing major news organizations settle winnable cases, or cases that experts say are winnable.

- Well, you had the ABC news example, for instance.

- In 60 Minutes.

- In 60 Minutes.

Both of them, essentially, gave in.

- Yes.

Because there were bigger things they wanted.

Because Trump sort of said, "If you don't give in on this, I'm going to make this other thing you care more about incredibly difficult."

And they capitulated.

- But isn't that problematic, not only for them, but for the rest of us, because it gives everybody else out in the media landscape or universe reason to be concerned that they're next.

- It has an incredibly chilling effect.

I think the flip side, I would point in this moment to The Atlantic, which shows that, no, truly, that shows that you can do tough journalism, that the full weight of the White House can come down on you, whether it's Trump a couple weeks ago calling me and my fellow reporter, calling us out by name on Truth Social, whether it's everything that Jeff Goldberg is incoming to him right now.

And it has in no way changed the ambition, or the stories, or how we view our jobs.

That we can continue and persist in the face of all of that.

- And to honor, as you said, the responsibility of people in your line of work, to hold power to account, period.

Most important thing that you could do.

- Yes.

And I think that the one thing that I think sometimes gets lost, because depending on who the administration is, it's that we do this whoever the president is, right?

We did this with Joe Biden.

We will do this with the next person, democratic or Republican.

And of course, each president and each administration poses new challenges, and it's a different flavor.

But the idea that we are somehow the resistance against Donald Trump is simply false, even though he has been very successful at pushing that narrative publicly.

- And people have heard him.

- Yeah.

- And some have believed it.

You mentioned President Biden.

You know, there was a lot of criticism at the end of the campaign and into the first weeks of this campaign that, in retrospect, the press should have been better at covering Biden's decline.

Is that a fair critique?

- I think yes and no.

I mean, I think it misses the fact that, on the one hand, a lot of his decline, to be fair, was happening in full public view.

And that was actually the challenge for President Biden.

I mean, I did a piece for the Washington Post after the debate, it feels like, unfortunately, it feels like every person in America has watched, and this is not me saying he has dementia, but every person in America has had an aging parent, or loved one, or someone who was not quite who they were previously, and you've had to take the car keys away.

And it's devastating.

But the reason Biden couldn't recover from that was because America watched it with their own eyes, and they said, "I know what this is like, I had to do this with my favorite uncle," right?

"I had to do this with my mom."

And so, again, part of it was playing out in public, and part of it was challenging because you would talk to people and you try to report these stories and you would be told, in private meetings, he was just as sharp as ever.

And there's a difference between, you know, does the fact that he shuffles is problematic for him politically?

It's not necessarily problematic for him to lead a country.

- Cognitively.

- Cognitively.

Yeah.

So that was kind of the rub.

And a lot of the decline was he aged in public.

Donald Trump is basically the exact same age as Biden.

- [Evan] Yeah.

- But sort of like the performative aspect, Trump could do in a way that Biden could not.

- And to acknowledged this about Trump.

Trump has had memory issues.

Trump has had speeches he's given where he's kind of gotten lost down at the rabbit trail or whatever.

You know, transposed words or gotten names wrong.

- He calls it the weave.

But yes, yeah, yeah, 100%.

- The weave.

But no one seems to view the weave as a threat to the country.

And people seem to view Biden's decline, which I think is interesting.

All right.

So, back to The Atlantic.

You left The Post, which you loved and which you still loved.

- I loved, and I still love.

Yeah.

- To go to The Atlantic.

You presented The Atlantic as an institution that, you know, fearless, we're going to do this work.

In your last months at The Post, among other things, was this decision by the owner Jeff Bezos to kill an editorial endorsing of Kamala Harris.

The phrase that was used at that moment, not just about The Post, was anticipatory obedience.

I don't want you to hate on The Post, and you won't.

- I was going to say, I will not.

- And I love the Post.

But you made a decision to leave and to go to The Atlantic.

What in your mind was the calculation that you made?

- Sure.

So I should say, I did not feel like I was fleeing The Washington Post to go to The Atlantic.

This seems weird considering I'm now middle-aged and have been a newspaper reporter for two decades, but I came out of college thinking I was going to be a magazine journalist.

That's what I wanted to do.

That's what I thought my skillset was.

And then I kind of fell into daily journalism, and life happens.

- It does.

- So, for me, going to The Atlantic, and I have long thought, even before Jeff Goldberg approached me, I've long thought The Atlantic was the best magazine in American journalism.

It was the first place where the paywall worked on me.

I subscribed because I was like, "I keep on running up against the paywall and I want to read more," right?

So I went to The Atlantic because I've always wanted to try to be a magazine journalist, and suddenly this opportunity fell in my lap to be a magazine journalist at what I believe is the best possible magazine, and it felt incredibly exciting.

But I will say, of course, what was happening at The Post felt devastating in many ways.

And it was mainly, it's tricky, because on the one hand, as an owner, Jeff Bezos is entitled to do whatever he wants on the editorial side.

That is his prerogative.

- Including change editors, you know, I mean.

- Including change editors, change publishers.

Weigh in on endorsements.

Pull endorsements.

He can do all of that.

- No one questioned whether he had the right to do it, it was about whether he should do it.

- It was certainly less complicated when he wasn't doing that.

(audience chuckles) - And let's also acknowledge, he was not the only one who did it, there were owners of other publications that were in a similar place.

- But the part that made me sad was that, you know, one of the end results was there ended up being an exodus of not just talent, but sort of, to me, what made The Post different, I also worked at The New York Times, I have friends at all other publications.

To me, what made The Post so special was sort of this culture of collegiality and comradery, and we always felt like the underdogs who were having so much fun punching above our weight.

And, you know, everyone is replaceable.

It's sad, but I think it's true.

- It's true.

It is.

- But, to me, what was getting lost was some of that culture.

You cannot replace a culture like that so quickly.

Although I also feel compelled to say, and it be because it's true, that The Post still has fantastic reporters and fantastic editors who are doing fantastic journalism in the face of a lot of distractions.

- And I feel confident that whatever The Post's journey going forward is, we will still have The Post.

And it will still be, you know, The Post is sort of like a Martin Scorsese movie.

The worst of them is still better than 90% of everything else, right?

- That's a good way of putting that.

- On its worst day, The Washington Post is still better than 90% of everything else.

Let's talk about you, you grew up in Bethesda, Maryland.

- True.

- Went to the University of Pennsylvania, worked for the student newspaper there.

Had some internships coming out of college, but ultimately landed at The New York Times, right?

The New York Times was your first big job.

- It was my first job.

Beyond waiting tables, it was my first job.

- [Evan] Right.

And you were there for 11 years.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

You were a researcher for our friend Maureen Dowd.

- Yes.

- At one point.

But then, ultimately, became a reporter and covered those two campaigns as we talked about.

What did you learn at The Times?

What was it like being there?

I mean, what a great first job to have as a training ground, right?

- Yes.

I mean, when I really think of what I learned, it was what I learned working for Maureen Dowd for five years.

Which, first and foremost, is that I learned that five years is too long to be an assistant.

I think Maureen would agree.

- But she's pretty fun to work with, isn't she?

- Oh, but she, I mean, you cannot imagine a better mentor or a better learning ground.

And just getting to watch Maureen as she talked to people, as she interviewed people, as she watched a story play out that we're all watching play out and had a slightly different, you know, 45° different angle on it, was sort of the best training in journalism I could ever imagine.

- She had terrific instincts, isn't she?

- Fantastic instincts.

And one last thing about her.

I think it is now a given that a lot of people now do, mainly poor imitations, but some quite good, of what Maureen did, right?

Which is writing about, you know, with color.

But if you go back and you read this stuff she wrote about George H. W. Bush, she was the only person doing this.

A White House reporter who felt like, you could write about what brand the president's tie was, or that he played aerobic golf.

And that could tell you something more meaningful about his style.

She was the first one to do it, I think.

- And I will also say, even through today, I'm thinking of the story she wrote recently about Graydon Carter, the old editor of Vanity Fair, and, you know, as a memoir.

- [Ashley] Yeah, yeah.

- People say, I'll do one story to promote something, but I want it to be with Maureen Dowd.

Which is kind of a hell of a thing.

- Yeah.

- So 11 years there, 7 at The Post.

- 8 at The Post.

- 8 at The Post, pardon me, and then now at The Atlantic.

This work still matters to you.

It still speaks to you.

- Oh, I love it.

Yeah.

- Why?

When you get up every day, what do you think about this work?

I mean, because, you know, you eventually, your mind begins to wander.

If you stay in one thing or at one place too long, inevitably your mind begins to wander.

- So I know I should say I love being a journalist because I love holding power to account, which I actually do.

- And I believe that.

- But the real reason is, to me, it just feels like the most fun job in the world, right?

Like I cannot believe that I get to wake up every day, and I also like writing, and write stories.

And I've been very lucky at The Times, The Post, and The Atlantic to work with not just great colleagues, but like some of my best friends.

And travel the world, and travel the country.

And I just cannot, not every day, 10% of days, I cannot believe this is my life, but 90% of days I cannot believe that I am so lucky to get to do this.

- And the TV part, I have to believe, which is kind of later in your career, has to have been additive and interesting in a whole other way because you get to be the narrator of so many of most significant moments in all of our lives on our behalf.

We look to you to tell us this is what's going on and how we should think about it.

- Well, I also think it's a reflection of how journalism has changed from when I first got into it.

When you first got into it, you were a print reporter, or you were a TV reporter, or you were a wire reporter, or you were a photographer, or you're a videographer.

And now, everyone kind of has to do everything.

- Everything, right, yeah.

- Even the TV stars of the world have to put out scoops quickly, online, and tweet them out.

And everyone needs to be able to go and talk about their stories on radio and on TV.

And it was fun, Maureen doesn't do a ton of TV, and the first TV that I ever did, I worked for her.

I was still her assistant, I'd written an article, and I was getting calls to go on MSNBC, and I kept on declining them all because, A, I had a horrible fear of public speaking.

I didn't think I could do it.

And B, I thought like we're print journalists, right?

Like that's not what we do, we write the stories.

And Maureen was like, "Who keeps calling you?"

And I was like, "Oh, it's MSNBC, but I'm obviously not answering."

And she was the one who was like, "You want to be a real journalist?

Then act like it.

Call them back."

And we were in LA on a trip and she's like, and obviously I had like hoodies, right?

She's like, "Here's a blazer, like here's a blow dryer, and we're going to go drive to that studio, and you're going to sit there and do it."

And I'm like doing yoga breathing and about to pass out.

And like the last thing I hear is Maureen being like, it was an article about the letters that President Obama used to get.

And finally, Maureen, before she exits the studio, she says, "You're writing about the letters that go to Bo the dog.

You're not talking about the Iraq war, you'll be fine."

And so, but I sort of realized, which is the way of saying I realized.

And then when I covered Congress, I would see my colleagues who would go on TV, and members, senators, members of Congress would pull them aside, right?

People I'm trying to get interviews with would pull the reporters on TV aside and say, "Hey, I saw what you said on Morning Joe, I just want to give you a little more context about."

- It's good for your journalism.

- Yeah.

So that is what I realized.

I realized TV is good for your journalism, and that's why I love it so much.

- Let me say, you've gotten over your fear of public speaking.

(audience chuckles) (Ashley chuckles) - Hey, I have.

- You have.

All right.

- It was exposure therapy.

- It was good.

All right, we're out of time.

Ashley Parker, thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you.

- Give her a big hand.

Ashley Parker, thank you.

- Thank you.

- So fun.

Thank you.

(audience clapping) We'd love to have you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at austinpbs.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, Q&As with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes.

- When you talk to Trump voters and you talk to Democrats who are trying to understand what happened, there is a sense that a lot of this had to do with the economy.

And it was, "Yes, I don't love X, Y, and Z, but prices are so high and I'm struggling."

- [Announcer] Support for Overheard with Evan Smith comes from: HillCo Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy.

Claire and Carl Stuart.

Christine and Philip Dial.

And the Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation, and public affairs communication.

ellergroup.com.

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