I’m sure you’ve read, or at least read about, the Time magazine interview with and cover story about Donald Trump that has dominated the news for the last week.
What you might not know is that the reporter who scored the interview and wrote the Time cover story, Eric Cortellessa, was, until two years ago, the investigative editor at the Washington Monthly, where he broke multiple big stories on antitrust, Larry Hogan, and Trump’s efforts to crush vote-by-mail.
In addition to deploying his hustle and smarts, Eric sharpened his questions by studying the Monthly’s Presidential Accomplishment Index, a detailed comparison of Donald Trump’s and Joe Biden’s achievements in office that we published in our latest issue.
Among other things, he got Trump to admit he won’t rule out violence if he loses in November and that he’s fine with states monitoring women’s pregnancies—revelations that are likely to haunt the Trump campaign.
As Monthly Contributing Editor James Fallows noted this week, Eric’s scoops came from politely but relentlessly grilling Trump about his proposed policies, rather than politics: “He keeps giving Trump more rope, which Trump keeps tying himself up in.”
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Eric isn’t the only former Washington Monthly editor shaping the news.
Jonathan Alter is writing shrewd and delightful dispatches from the Trump hush-money trial for the Washington Monthly and The New York Times. Ben Wallace-Wells is doing the same for The New Yorker. Michelle Cottle and Charles Homans of The New York Times have been setting the standard for reporting on and analysis of campus protests and Trump’s evolving fascist rhetoric. And Gilad Edelman, who overlapped with Eric at the Monthly and is now a senior editor at The Atlantic, has been publishing a steady flow of great stories on political economy.
This is an excellent example of how the Washington Monthly network works to bring about change. We are not just a small magazine that publishes ahead-of-the-curve stories on politics and policy. We are a community of like-minded thinker-writers who hold senior positions in major media organizations, read each other’s work, and help each other achieve our shared goals of protecting and strengthening American democracy in this crisis.
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Sincerely,
Paul Glastris
Editor in Chief
