Jon Sopel - UnPresidented : Politics, pandemics and the race that Trumped all others

Jon Sopel has been the BBCs North America Editor since 2014. He has covered the 2016 election and Trumps White House at first hand, reporting for the BBC across TV, radio, and online. As a member of the White House Press Corps, he has accompanied both President Obama and President Trump on Air Force One and interviewed President Obama at the White House. He has travelled extensively across the US and recently rode a Harley Davidson down the West Coast (that wasnt for work though). He lives in Washington and London.

He is the author of the If Only They Didnt Speak English: Notes from Trumps America and A Year at the Circus: Inside Trumps White House.

To Debby and David Horsford

And Debby Baum

People who kept me sane during Covid

It is now nearly a month since the election was over, and the President is yet to concede. He may never. He wont do so willingly or with a happy heart, even though the result is clear. But why would you expect this race to conclude with neatly creased wrapping paper, a pretty ribbon and a bow? The Trump presidency hasnt been like that. Why should the manner of his departure be any different from his arrival or the period when he was in office, for that matter?

He has pushed at the limits of the constitution throughout, and seems to be stress-testing this countrys shock absorbers as he leaves. The United States, the city on the hill, this beacon of democratic light, that has sought to show the rest of the world how we the people are in charge, is going through perhaps its most precarious moment.

And simultaneously there are comic aspects. Since the election, his self-described elite strike force of lawyers have had derision heaped upon them for some of the bizarre claims theyve made about the election, and the news conferences theyve held. There was his principal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, with hair dye running down his face as he seemed to have a literal meltdown. Another lawyer cooked up such a bizarre conspiracy theory that she was fired from the Trump legal team. And then there was Thanksgiving. The President answered reporters questions for the first time since the election in the Diplomatic Reception Room in the White House. It was a perfect visual metaphor. Power shifts fast in Washington, and there was Donald Trump sat behind a desk that was way too small, in a chair that he could barely fit his behind into. It reminded me of parent/ teacher evenings when my kids were small and you sat behind their tiny desks to hear about their performance in the nativity play. For a man who cares so deeply about image, becoming the butt of endless jokes and memes must be agony. And the abject failure of any of the court cases to gain traction even worse.

Throughout this, Joe Biden has stubbornly refused to engage in any kind of Twitter war. Hes just ignored Donald Trump (something else that has probably irritated the current incumbent), and gone about appointing the people that will fill the key roles in his administration. They couldnt be more different from the people that the President surrounded himself with. Where the former businessman had a penchant for the white and wealthy, these are all rock-solid technocrats whove worked in government before and wont need to ask on day one where they find the toilets and the lifts. They know their way around, and are much more diverse as a group. And the messaging from the president-elect could not be more different, as he repeatedly stresses the need to unite; the importance of lowering the political temperature. Whether or not this is the right prescription for the country is for others to judge, but let me make one prediction journalistically it will be nothing like as story-rich or entertaining.

When this election diary project was discussed with my publisher Yvonne Jacob and literary agent Rory Scarfe, we anticipated there would be the odd plot twist; that 2020 would throw up some very Trumpian surprises but I have to confess that a global pandemic to rival the Spanish Flu, an economic downturn to match the Great Depression, and race riots to rival 1968 were things I hadnt foreseen.

At the start of this year, my wife, Linda, and I moved out of our Georgetown house and into a much smaller apartment. She was moving back to the UK so that she could be of more help to her 93-year-old mother, and because I would be travelling incessantly for the election within the US, and could hop back and forth across the Atlantic whenever I chose, it all seemed to make sense.

That plan hasnt worked out so well. Everyone has had to face their own challenges and demons this horrible year although as I write this the news on vaccines is looking very positive. With our son Max living in Australia with his wife, Kate; with Linda back in London with our daughter, Anna, the world has suddenly seemed once again a forbiddingly big and disconnected place. Not being able to see each other has been tough. But I know so many people have been through far worse.

Thankfully I have some wonderful American friends in Washington. Debby and David Horsford have been absolute rock-stars on the phone to suggest socially distanced walks, or sitting out in their garden for dinners six feet apart. And the other person is Debby Baum, my former next-door neighbour. She and her three daughters, Ann, Maddy and Mary Douglass, have let me join them on their walks, cycle rides and trips to their house out on the Chesapeake Bay. You have no idea how much it meant to me to be able to escape occasionally from being alone in this apartment. Thank you.

Finally, I have to thank the team. The bureau in Washington has been a really happy place to work, and thanks in large part to the bureau chief, Paul Danahar a great boss, and a good friend. And then theres John Landy, whos been my cameraman since I arrived, over six years ago. He is a cerebral Australian (oxymoron jokes, anyone?). Not only does he shoot wonderful pictures, but will then say to me when Im scripting in the edit suite, I think maybe you can phrase that better. (The first time he did this I thought I might kill him.) Annoyingly, he invariably has a point. He is huge fun to be with, and though there have been a lot of tense moments I dont think we have once fallen out. And then there is our producer, Morgan Gisholt Minard. I had only worked with her a bit before this campaign, but she has been the best. Hard-working, creative, thinks of everything, likes a glass of good red wine. Also, Morgan has read over much of this to remind me of key bits I might have overlooked, or have overwritten. And the real joy of this little team: we all trust each other to do our jobs, and do them well. And we have a lot of laughs along the way.

This will be the third book that Ive written since I have been in DC. History will come to its own verdict (probably a deeply divided one) on Donald Trump, and the legacy he has left the US and the world, but as a correspondent to be here, covering this period of time has been sometimes exhausting, sometimes exasperating, sometimes exhilarating but overwhelmingly its been unforgettable: the wildest of rides, the journalistic assignment of a lifetime the flavour of which I hope will come out in the pages that follow.

Jon Sopel