AUTHOR ARCHIVES

George E. Condon Jr.

George Condon Jr. George E. Condon Jr. is White House correspondent for National Journal. He joined National Journal at the beginning of the Obama administration, covering the White House for CongressDaily. Prior to that, he covered the White House and national politics as Washington bureau chief for Copley News Service and the San Diego Union-Tribune. Condon has interviewed eight presidents and reported from 88 countries. He led the team that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for coverage of the corruption of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Condon is a past president of the White House Correspondents Association and the Gridiron Club and past chairman of the National Press Foundation.
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Trump Has His 20th 'Worst Week' Out of 30 in Office

August 18, 2017 By the end of the week, count on headlines declaring this the worst week of Donald Trump’s presidency. That’s not really surprising. Any president who in one seven-day period threatened nuclear war in Korea, talked of a possible war in Venezuela, and found “some very fine people” marching with Nazis...

Kushner’s Curious Plan for a Back Channel

June 5, 2017 Dip­lo­mat­ic back chan­nels, far from be­ing in­ven­ted by Don­ald Trump or his son-in-law Jared Kush­ner, have been an ac­cep­ted fix­ture in al­most every pres­id­ency since George Wash­ing­ton, most fam­ously at the time of the Cuban Mis­sile Crisis in 1962 when Pres­id­ent Kennedy’s broth­er, Robert F. Kennedy, was more en­gaged than...

How to Make Donald Trump’s Phone Safe

December 16, 2016 Eight years after he was the man try­ing to grant Barack Obama’s plea to keep his Black­Berry, Richard “Dick­ie” George is watch­ing with more than cas­u­al in­terest while an­oth­er pres­id­ent-elect fights to keep his smart­phone as a life­line out of the bubble that is the mod­ern pres­id­ency. Obama won that...

How to Make Donald Trump’s Phone Safe

December 16, 2016 FROM NEXTGOV arrow Eight years after he was the man try­ing to grant Barack Obama’s plea to keep his Black­Berry, Richard “Dick­ie” George is watch­ing with more than cas­u­al in­terest while an­oth­er pres­id­ent-elect fights to keep his smart­phone as a life­line out of the bubble that is the mod­ern pres­id­ency. Obama won that...

How to Make Donald Trump’s Phone Safe

December 16, 2016 Eight years after he was the man try­ing to grant Barack Obama’s plea to keep his Black­Berry, Richard “Dick­ie” George is watch­ing with more than cas­u­al in­terest while an­oth­er pres­id­ent-elect fights to keep his smart­phone as a life­line out of the bubble that is the mod­ern pres­id­ency. Obama won that...

The Rocky Obama-Sanders Relationship

June 9, 2016 Don’t ex­pect a lot of warmth when Pres­id­ent Obama sits down Thursday at the White House with Sen. Bernie Sanders. This is not a re­union of polit­ic­al al­lies or per­son­al friends or fel­low sen­at­ors who bon­ded when they served to­geth­er. In­stead, the agenda will be all busi­ness as the pres­id­ent...

How Obama Will Give His Final State of the Union

January 9, 2016 As Pres­id­ent Obama pre­pares to de­liv­er his fi­nal State of the Uni­on ad­dress Tues­day, he can only hope for bet­ter treat­ment than the last two-term pres­id­ent re­ceived. The White House back in 2008 was less than thrilled when Pres­id­ent George W. Bush’s ap­pear­ance be­fore a joint ses­sion of Con­gress was...

The White House Thinks Obama Had a Very Good Year. The Public Isn’t so Sure.

December 21, 2015 By al­most all tra­di­tion­al met­rics, the White House should be cel­eb­rat­ing his 2015 in­stead of of­fer­ing the sub­dued and meas­ured de­fense seen from Pres­id­ent Obama at his end-of-the-year press con­fer­ence. After all, the usu­al num­bers are good—un­em­ploy­ment rate down, job cre­ation up, in­fla­tion low, GDP up, gas prices de­clin­ing. Only...

The President Again Tries to Right the Ship

November 25, 2015 With the coun­try shaken by the blood­shed in Par­is, nervous about at­tacks at home, and con­cerned about an in­flux of refugees from the Middle East, many pres­id­ents would take to the air­waves for a prime-time ad­dress to re­as­sure an anxious na­tion. But that is not Pres­id­ent Obama’s pre­ferred way to...

Yes, President Obama Is Going to Watch the Debate

October 13, 2015 The White House wants you to know that Pres­id­ent Obama is not watch­ing every step taken by those who want his job. “He feels like he’s got bet­ter things to do,” ex­plained press sec­ret­ary Josh Earn­est when asked why the pres­id­ent didn’t watch the early GOP can­did­ate de­bates. While Earn­est...