Feb 10, 2020 Aaron Rupar is an American journalist well known for covering Trump’s speeches, rallies, press gaggles, and chopper talks up close. Being an Associate editor at Vox, He covers policy and national politics. He first gained notoriety due to his City Pages Gig. Aaron has already become a well-known name, at least in the world of Twitter. The latest tweets from @atrupar.
×Photos courtesy Aaron Rupar
Aaron Rupar
With the amount of TV coverage of the Trump administration journalist Aaron Rupar watches every day, it’s a wonder he was able to leave his D.C. home long enough to take this photo.
If you’re on social media at all, chances are you’ve crossed paths with Aaron Rupar, even if you don’t follow him. That’s because the Vox journalist has become one of the most prolific chroniclers of one of the most voluble administrations in United States history. And the notable folks you follow—celebrities like Chrissy Teigen and Patton Oswalt, politicians, and prominent newspeople like Dan Rather—retweet him on the regular. Yeah, that Aaron Rupar.
Alternately, you may have noticed Rupar back in the early ’10s, when he carved out some modicum of notoriety at City Pages churning out viral stories like “Minneapolis 3rd Most Literate City; St. Paul Slipping Back into Stone Age” and “Wisconsin Couple Wanted Birth Control, Got Vitamins and a Pregnancy Instead.” After gigs at FOX 9 and, briefly, a comms role with the DFL, Rupar moved to D.C. in 2016 for a job at progressive news outlet ThinkProgress. He arrived just in time for Donald Trump to lock up the Republican nomination and win the election—two things, oddly, that would help catapult Rupar to fame (or Twitter fame, at least).
Right around the time Trump first dismissed the Access Hollywood tape as fake news (remember that?), Rupar became associate editor of politics and policy at Vox. His beat? Watching all things Trump, from Fox News to White House press briefings to rallies. As the administration has progressed, so has the following for Rupar’s critique-filled chronicles of it: Today he counts more than 471,000 Twitter followers.
So, on a Friday in May, after he’d finished live-tweeting press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s daily press briefing, I gave him a ring. We talked about what it’s like to be an internet-famous political journalist who makes his trade devotedly following a presidency that a lot of Minnesotans try hard not to watch. And then, just before we published the piece, George Floyd was killed and the whole world turned upside down—AGAIN. So, we held this story, and three months later, I called Rupar back to finish a conversation we thought had already ended.
The first two-thirds of this Q&A are from our first conversation in May. The last, graver, bit took place in late August. In 2020 it seems like the whole world can change in the blink of an eye. Here’s how it changed for Aaron Rupar.
•• Friday, May 15 ••
You first made a name for yourself at City Pages writing, dare I say, clickbait.
Yeah, a little bit. When I started, their whole thing was being somewhat controversial and being able to write hot takes, which was really, in some ways, exciting. I had really never written like that before. Village Voice Media at that time was still the Wild West. There was definitely a seedy side to that whole operation.
Rupar on Fox9
Rupar during his stint as a web producer at FOX 9.
It must have helped you develop a callus to controversy.
It’s trained me well for right now. One of the things that was fun about City Pages was that my beat was everything, and these days I’m mainly covering Trump. Which is fascinating in its own way. But it’s a lot of stories about one person.
Just like you’re covering Trump every day, we’re all reading about Trump every day. Chicken or egg?
It’s kind of a double-edged thing because, by definition, what the president does and says matters. But there is an element, I think, of unhealthiness, where it feels like we’re trapped in his fantasyland. He’s manipulating people very intentionally, and we’re falling for it by covering him. It’s a tricky thing.
Some media have adjusted to this better than others.
I think that a lot of outlets, for reasons I think are understandable, their default setting is to treat everything that Trump and his administration say as if the motives are sincere. And I think that leads to a level of credulousness that Republicans exploit to muddy the waters. We’re seeing it right now with this Obamagate thing.
Sometimes you just have to use your intelligence as a journalist. When someone lies to you, say that they’re lying to you. And don’t use these painstaking euphemisms like “false claim” or “hard evidence.” Those are weasel words.
Aaron Rupar Bio
Such a big part of what Trump is up to is trying to create this blizzard that confuses people, which is useful for him. If you’re a journalist that can’t call him out on his lies, you’re contributing to that state of confusion.
According to your Twitter feed, you watch a ton of TV. Staring into the abyss of this thing all day is a huge part of what you do, right?
I write, and that’s the part of my job that actually puts money on the table. But the video coverage of the press conferences, the congressional hearings, rally speeches, that sort of thing, is a huge part of my feed. I stumbled into it on accident. We had a training on software called SnapStream, which is a video editing service, back in the fall of 2017. That night I happened to have Fox News on, which was not something I was watching very much of at all at that time. And John Kelly, then the White House chief of staff, was on. And he was defending Robert E. Lee and saying that he was an honorable man and doing this apology for the Confederacy.
And I was like, “Oh my god. I can’t believe he just said that.” So, I clipped the video, put it on Twitter, and it was the most viral thing, I think, I had ever tweeted. It opened my eyes. It unfolded from there, and it’s basically become the centerpiece of my career.
Rupar City Pages
Rupar mugs for the camera during the City Pages gig that first brought him notoriety.
Crazy. You moved to D.C. before the election in 2016, right?
Yes, February 2016. I won’t get too into it, but I went from City Pages to FOX 9, and then I was a comms person for the Democratic Party. It really wasn’t for me: I found it to be dull. So, after about six months, I was like, “I really need to get back into journalism.” I was missing that thrill of covering stories and being in the conversation.
I got hired by ThinkProgress. And my first day was Super Tuesday, which was the day, of course, that Trump consolidated the Republican nomination.
For you to arrive in D.C. at the beginning of such an unprecedented moment in history and figure out how to do the very particular thing you do at that same time is—
I like to think I might have been able to find other things to cover even if Trump wasn’t here. But who knows? I have a master’s degree in philosophy, and I’ve always had an interest in history. And I think even having some of the background I do comes in handy to contextualize the lying and the erosion of democratic norms, which there is a lot of precedent for in history.
Of course, your job isn’t just tweeting clips.
Right. Part of my job is to edit our Trump coverage. I’m our lead on Trump. And it’s really morphed into covering Trump and the administration. The thing that’s different for me is I’m not one of the reporters who’s there. There are certain advantages to having access. But there are also advantages to not having it. I don’t really have to toe the line or make sure that I’m not offending anybody.
Do people realize you’re covering the administration from afar?
It’s funny, because a lot of people will DM me and say, “Why did you ask Trump that question?” or “Why didn’t you ask him this question?” They assume I’m actually there, but I’m never actually there.
The other day you tweeted a screenshot of your mom’s text that read, “See trump rewrites u. Wow. Congrats.” What’s that spotlight like?
It’s pretty surreal. It’s been a virtuous circle of posting content that people want to share, and then getting more people following me, and posting. Your following grows and grows and grows. It hit a certain point of exponential growth a couple years ago. It’s led to people like Chrissy Teigen following me.
It’s a weird mode of being famous because it’s really only online. I can go out in D.C., and not a single person is going to say, “That’s Aaron from Vox.” I feel like I’m friends with people like Patton Oswalt, and all of these celebrities. But it’s not like I’ve ever hung out with these people.
Twitter Aaron Rupar
Conversely, not all the notable people who are now aware of you also like you.
When I do a name search on Twitter, I see a lot of people who say really mean things or really don’t like my work. But I don’t take a lot of stuff personally. In a lot of cases, they’re anonymous troll accounts. It’s not like they are people who I have relationships with who think I’m doing terrible work or anything like that.
This is where that callus you began developing at City Pages comes in handy.
The first job I had as a kid was as a baseball umpire for a bunch of years. And one of the main skills there is conflict resolution and taking criticism. It feels like almost everything I’ve ever done in my professional life has trained me in that exercise of taking criticism and trying to stay cool under fire.
And sometimes, like your mom said, that fire comes directly from the Oval Office. How many times has President Trump retweeted you?
Three times.
What’s that like?
I’m still not totally convinced that Trump knows who I am. The first time he retweeted me, it was a clip of the Washington Nationals at the White House after they won in the World Series. I think he probably searched for “Washington Nationals Trump,” or something like that, and my video just happened to be the top one. So he retweeted it.
My tweet was just a description of what was going on: “Here’s Ryan Zimmerman with Trump,” or something like that. It wasn’t criticizing him or anything like that, but it was part of a thread that was. I had people messaging me like, “Did he not look at the rest of your thread?” And I don’t think he did. I don’t think there’s a lot of carefulness going into this, necessarily.
This last one there was a little tinge of “check out these liberal reporters conspiring with each other.” Even then, it wasn’t totally clear that he was attacking me. It might have been the two White House reporters who were in the actual video clip that he was referring to. The funny thing is that I get so many replies and DMs on Twitter that Trump retweeting me doesn’t lead to a noticeable uptick.
Who do you think watches more Fox News, Aaron Rupar or Donald Trump?
Here’s the funny thing: When I started doing this, I watched a ton of Fox News, almost all day. Lately, I’ve really scaled that back. I’m covering more of the White House events. I watch it during the day. I have it on in the background at all times. But I think Trump—given how many shows he’s live-tweeting, and even on Friday, Saturday night—he’s watching Fox News at times when I wouldn’t think of watching it. I think, certainly, he watches more. But I would put myself in the top 1 percentile.
Top 1 percent?!
People say, “How can you watch this much Fox News?” But I don’t really view it as being this huge burden. Given that Republicans control the White House and the Senate, it’s just a gold mine of information. I wish we lived in a world where it didn’t matter as much as it does. But they’re shaping opinions for a crucial mass of the voting public. Trump wasn’t elected without Fox News. Part of the skill set I have is just the endurance to be able to put up with it.
How long can you put up with it?
If he wins another term, I shudder to think what the media landscape is even going to look like in four years. I’m sure there’s still going to be local journalism, but on the national level? These press conferences and things like that will still be accessible to cover in a video context. But will there even be press briefings?
Aaron Rupar Wikipedia
Ever wonder what these four years would have been like for you had Hillary Clinton won?
I think I would still be doing political journalism out here. But I don’t think it would have risen to the level of notoriety that it has. My family teases me all the time that Trump was the best and worst thing that ever happened to me.
•• Monday, August 24 ••
Just days after we spoke in May, the world changed again. Now, here we are.
Aaron Rupar Cnn
I mean, it’s very hard to watch the George Floyd video and come away with any other conclusion other than that George Floyd was a victim and was brutalized and the force that was used was disproportionate to any sort of alleged offense that he committed there. But did I foresee that it would spiral out of control the way that it did? I really didn’t.
What’s it like watching something like that unfold in your hometown from afar?
It was weird because when it was going down, I had just started my parental leave. We had just, actually, gotten back from the hospital after my daughter was born, and the first night we were home was the night that the rioting was at its most intense. A lot of the neighborhoods that were badly affected were neighborhoods that at one time I lived around, including down by the Third Precinct. Then, of course, in the nights that followed, similar protests took place close to where I now live. And so, yeah, I mean, there was this weird symmetry where Minneapolis was the epicenter and then, for very different but related reasons, D.C. became the epicenter.
A summer of racial unrest leading up to an election. Sounds familiar. Things in August of 2020, politically, are really not that different from where they were in August of 2016. This is appalling, and none of it is surprising. It does feel, now, that we’re staring into the abyss. I mean, today, for instance, during his Republican National Convention speech, the very first thing Trump said, “joking,” was that he deserves another term after his second because Obama was caught spying on his campaign, which is something that never happened. So, it’s all right on the table now.
Sounds like you’re a little more concerned about November now than when we first spoke.
Aaron Rupar Tweets
I think that the COVID situation has been the thing that maybe radicalized me more than I was a few months ago, just because I’m seeing that the tactic on Trump’s part is basically to deny reality and then blame any problem that is undeniable on Democrats, even if it makes no sense to try and do so—trying to blame Obama for the fact that there wasn’t a coronavirus test when Obama left office three years before COVID-19 existed. I mean, it’s so patently absurd.
So, how does that translate to the election?
I think one thing that people have to mentally prepare themselves for is that—and Trump has been trying to do this—he tries to conflate a delay in the election results with fraud. It takes some time to tabulate the mail-in results, but that does not mean that someone is tampering with votes. And that gap presents Trump with an opportunity to basically try and steal the election and say, “Look, I’m up by 200 votes right now in Wisconsin. These mail ballots are invalid, and therefore, I win.” Obviously the argument will end up a bit more sophisticated than that, but that’s the crux of the scenario I see unfolding. I’m not sure at this point what the end result of that challenge will be, but the fact that Trump will make that challenge, I have no doubt of.
It sounds like you’re questioning whether we will even have a peaceful transition of power.
I think it’s a commentary on the state of our democracy that that’s even a thing that is in play. I would say it’s much more likely than not that we have a peaceful transition or peaceful continuity. But again, what is the probability that that doesn’t happen? It’s not negligible. And that’s the thing. If you have a 20 percent chance of something horrible happening in your life, I mean, that’s a significant percentage, right?
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This article originally appeared in the October 2020 issue.