Jonathan Swan is Australian journalist behind bizarre Trump interview (2024)

The Australian journalist whose interview with United States President Donald Trump has made him an internet sensation grew up playing rugby near Sydney's eastern beaches.

Jonathan Swan, who turns 35 on Friday, is the son of Walkley award-winning health journalist and physician Dr Norman Swan and paediatrician Dr Lee Sutton.

Dr Swan, the host of the ABC's Health Report radio program, has been the national broadcaster's face and voice of its COVID-19 pandemic coverage.

Jonathan is married to American journalist Betsy Woodruff, who works for the Politico news organisation, and the couple is expecting their first child next month.

Already a rising star among the White House press pack, Swan's bizarre conversation with Trump will only enhance his growing reputation as a first-rate television interviewer.

The reporter's stunned reactions as Trump stumbles through responding to his questions about COVID-19 have become memes and are trending on Twitter.

Widely read, fiercely inquisitive and with a sharp sense of humour, Swan has won new fans in America for his boyish good looks and distinctive Australian accent.

'It's like the old quote - women want to be with him, men want to be him,' says a Sydney friend who has known Swan since childhood. 'It's sickening really.'

Swan has been a journalist for only a decade and been reporting on Washington for barely five years but has built a network of contacts which is the envy of many of his peers.

Known as 'Swanny' to friends in Australia where he was raised in a Jewish family, the former private school boy is a prodigiously hard worker and prolific researcher.

Swan's range of bemused facial expressions while talking to Trump has gained as much attention as the president's tortured answers in a 35-minute HBO interview, a clip of which has gone viral.

Vogue has published 'the seven craziest things Trump said' and New York magazine has produced 'The Nine Wildest Answers in Trump's Interview With Jonathan Swan.'

Swan does not maintain the usual reporter's straight face when talking to Trump and his interviewing style has been praised for quick-thinking follow up questions.

Daily Mail columnist Piers Morgan described Swan as a 'well-prepared' and 'top-class' journalist who was determined not to let Trump off the hook.

Morgan wrote that Trump's 'extraordinary, toe-curling' interview with Swan 'exposed just why the US has become a horrifyingly bad template for how NOT to combat Covid-19.'

'Jonathan Swan's constantly bemused face last night perfectly summed up what we were all thinking as the President brandished his meaningless self-serving charts and spouted his nonsensical self-justifying drivel... '

While the interview also covers Trump's campaign rallies and the arrest of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein's alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell, it concentrates on the president's response to COVID-19.

In exchange after exchange Swan seems bewildered by Trump's explanation of how he has dealt with the pandemic.

'You know there are those that say you can test too much,' Trump says at one point. 'You do know that?'

Swan responds: 'Who says that?'

'Oh, just read the manuals,' Trump answers. 'Read the books.'

Swan:'Manuals? What manuals?'

Trump: 'Read the books, read the books.'

Swan is national political reporter for the Axios news website and is considered to have some of the best journalistic access to the Trump administration.

He began his career as a cadet journalist at the Sydney Morning Herald in 2011 after completing a Bachelor of Arts at Sydney University and a stint in advertising and was soon sent to Canberra to report on federal politics.

The year after covering the 2013 election campaign he won an American Australian Association fellowship to study US politics and history at John Hopkins University.

As part of that fellowship Swan worked for Republican Senator Ed Royce before he got a permanent journalistic role with political news website The Hill.

Politico named him one of '16 Breakout Media Stars' in 2016 and he was poached by the founders of Axios the same year.

Since joining Axios Swan has broken major stories about the Trump administration for the website and has made regular appearances on TV.

He was the first to report the US would pull out of the Paris climate deal and that Trump would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Former Washington Post journalist Ronald Kessler has claimed Swan is among a small number of journalists to whom Trump feeds information to be used without attribution.

While Swan has settled in Washington and intends to remain in the US he remains extremely close to his parents, two sisters and a tight circle of Australian friends.

Mates from Sydney Grammar School attended his wedding at a Virginia winery in September last year in a ceremony that included a mixture of Jewish and Christian traditions.

Other guests including Australia's then ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, and former Home and Away actor Cassie Howarth.