Politico reporter Eugene Daniels says his grandmother, who was active in politics and the civil rights movement, instilled in him both a love of history and politics. She died in 2012, but he knows she would have loved seeing him step into his new role: covering Vice President Kamala Harris, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and the First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden as part of Politico’s White House team. He’d also be one of the new writers producing Politico’s iconic Playbook.
“When I go into the White House it’s not lost on me the reason that I’m there is because of the hard work of my family members, the hard work of Black people in general, and the fact that slaves built that building.”
In our conversation, we talked about covering DC, being a Black man and a gay man working the White House beat, and about his experience in local news in Colorado, when a news executive told him his “voice was too Black to be a full time reporter in Colorado Springs.”
Recent Stories:
In Episode 10 of the podcast, I talked to NBC News correspondent Kate Snow, who recently talked to kids across the country about how they’re coping after a year in pandemic lockdown. The kids told her: they’re struggling. Stress around isolation and grappling with remote and hybrid learning has kids feeling disconnected—and for some, feeling profound pain.
Snow wrote last year about the stress she felt when her husband fell ill with Covid, leading her to seek treatment with a therapist.
Episode 11: Eugene Daniels, Politico