Election Day is 12 days away. Every day of the countdown, Times Insider will share an article about how our election coverage works. Today, a reporter covering the Trump campaign shares the unique challenges of covering the former president.
Last weekend, former President Donald J. Trump made an unlikely stop on the campaign trail: a McDonald’s kitchen.
Michael Gold, a political correspondent for The New York Times, had a front-row seat to the colorful political stunt in suburban Philadelphia, where the former president shoveled fries into red cartons, worked the drive-through window and handed bags of food to effusive (preselected) customers.
It was yet another noteworthy stop for the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign, which Mr. Gold has been following since the fall of 2023.
“When I started this, I didn’t think we’d have one candidate survive an assassination attempt at a rally,” Mr. Gold said in a recent interview. “No one knew how Trump’s indictments would play out. No one knew what the trial schedule would be, let alone that the former president would be convicted on 34 felony counts. So much was unpredictable.”
Mr. Gold previously reported for the Metro desk; in 2023, he helped expose the many falsehoods peddled by Representative George Santos, Republican of New York. The opportunity to cover stories beyond New York City led him to the Politics desk later that year.
And so far, the campaign has taken him to places like Bozeman, Mont., where the former president referred to his opponent as a “bumbling communist lunatic”; Rapid City, S.D., where Trump supporters wore his mug shot on T-shirts; and, of course, the occasional fast-food restaurant.
In total, Mr. Gold has spent more than 120 days following the campaign on the road. The campaign has nicknamed the plane carrying members of the media trailing Mr. Trump the “thank you press express” — a joke that references what press wranglers for the White House or campaigns say after the president or a candidate is finished speaking.
“It’s a distinctive opportunity to be able to cover such a wide territory of the country and talk to people about such a wide range of things,” Mr. Gold said.
In a conversation, Mr. Gold shares what life has been like as Election Day nears and what motivated him to follow the campaign. These are edited excerpts.
Why is it so crucial to be on the road with the Trump campaign?
Part of covering any candidate is seeing how their message is resonating with the people they’re talking to. You don’t necessarily get a sense of the crowd’s reaction, or the mood in the venue, unless you’re there. It’s important to talk to voters at these rallies and campaigns to get a sense of why people in Wisconsin are attracted to parts of Trump’s message, and how that might differ from what people in Nevada or Georgia think. It’s crucial to see how specific lines from his stump speech resonate differently across the country.
What are some examples of different messaging you hear in certain places?
Arizona’s proximity to the border has made immigration a big issue. And it’s an issue people feel more deeply there; it seems like part of their lived experience. In other places, people are concerned about immigration, but it tends to be more abstract for them. The economy is on the minds of voters in every state. It’s interesting to see what the big local issues are compared to state-specific issues.
Fracking and energy prices are a huge thing in Pennsylvania. When Trump went to Michigan, he talked about the auto industry extensively. When he went to North Carolina, he talked about the auto industry but he was very focused on furniture, which had been a big industry there. It’s the little ways candidates change their speeches to target specific groups that can be revealing.
What has it been like to cover Trump in the final weeks of his campaign, especially as he travels through various battleground states?
We’re at the stage where he’s doing events every day. It’s harder to get a sense at rallies of how undecided voters are reacting to things. I tend to talk more with people who are already committed one way or the other to backing Trump. We do find undecided voters at his events, but they tend to be rare.
One thing that strikes me is that a lot of Trump’s rallies are held outside urban areas. As you drive from a city to a more rural location, you can keep track of political signs and billboards and get a sense of how the parties or PACs are spending money and who they’re trying to target. I drove on the Pennsylvania Turnpike for several hours in September, and it was interesting to watch the shift as you go to places that are more contested. You can see more yard signs and billboards.
Also, if you turn on the TV in some of these states, it feels like the only ads are political ads.
What challenges are unique to covering Trump?
He deviates from what we expect from political candidates. His speeches are very freewheeling. They’re very discursive and can be hard to follow.
Trump’s hostility toward the media is often reflected through his supporters. At almost every speech, he’ll rile up the crowd by criticizing “fake news.” People don’t always want to talk to me because his supporters have gotten the sense from him that the mainstream media is biased. I’ve never worried about my safety, but there have been times when people have been hostile. That’s part of the job, of course.
Can you elaborate more on some of the pros and cons of this assignment?
It’s hard to predict what the campaign is going to schedule. You don’t always know where you’re going to be. It doesn’t always emerge what states are going to be important, how the dynamics in each state might change and how the candidates might have to adjust. It’s more intense than I expected.
One thing that drew me to this job was getting out into the country and talking to people in other states, people who have such different experiences, who are concerned about different things and who see the world in different ways. It’s exciting to do that.
The post From Swing States to Drive-Throughs: On the Campaign Trail with Trump appeared first on New York Times.
