THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020 + ST 11dence distinct from the rat-tat-tat verbal
spray that has typified cable news for a gen-
eration.
“Not only would Black women put Joe Bi-
den in the White House,” Ms. Phillip said on
air, predicting the finish, “but they would
also put a Black woman in the White House
as well.” And while “Donald Trump’s politi-
cal career began with the racist birther lie,”
she continued, “it may very well end with a
Black woman in the White House.”
Clips of Ms. Phillip were widely circu-
lated on social media, and her Instagram
followers quadrupled. Viewers like Bernice
King, the chief executive of the Martin Lu-
ther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social
Change in Atlanta and the youngest child of
Dr. King and Coretta Scott King, shared
their appreciation.
“I celebrate @abbydphillip,” Ms. King
tweeted, posting Ms. Phillip’s CNN head-
shot.
At a network that draws top viewership
at such moments, a star was being born.
“Abby has an intellect that is unmatched,
and she has a pretty unique ability to syn-
thesize information quickly both in her re-
porting and her analysis, and deliver it in a
way that meets the viewers where they
are,” said David Chalian, the CNN political
director.
Ms. Phillip said the goal of her coverage
was to include what she was hearing from
friends and relatives, as well as political
sources. “The ways that I contribute to the
conversation come from both the years I
have worked as a reporter but also what
happens to be my own lived experience,”
she said.
Her upbringing, she said, is “a typical im-
migrant story.” She was born in Virginia to
parents from Trinidad and Tobago, and
raised with five siblings. Their father, Car-
los Phillip, was a teacher and then an educa-
tional psychologist in Washington. Their
mother, June Phillip, is now a realtor. The
family returned to Trinidad and Tobago for
a few years when Abby was a child, and she
had an accent when she returned to Amer-
ica at 9. “For a lot of years I was very quiet,”
Ms. Phillip said. Teachers would send home
notes to her parents that said “Abby needs
to speak up.”
Ms. Phillip enrolled at Harvard College in
2006 with plans to study medicine. She
joined the staff of The Crimson, the student
newspaper, and began to consider journal-
ism as a career after she went on a school-
sponsored public service trip through Ten-
nessee and Mississippi, tracing events of
the civil rights movement, and after Barack
Obama’s election her junior year.
After graduating in 2010 with a bachelor’s
degree in government, Ms. Phillip went to
blog at Politico. “Fast and furious,” she said.
Two years later, she moved on to a news fel-
lowship at ABC News, working mostly on
“This Week” with George Stephanopoulos.
Unsure about TV journalism (“I had a lot of
concerns about the show business part of
it”) she joined The Washington Post as a re-
porter and helped cover Hillary Clinton’s
2016 presidential campaign. After frequent
appearances as a political news analyst on
CNN, the network hired her in 2018.
In a field crowded with fast-talking bros,
Ms. Phillip stands out for her reserve. She
has always been “very quiet and ambitious,
but she doesn’t present in a flamboyant way
like some ambitious people do,” said John
Harris, a founder of Politico. “When I see
her on TV, she conveys that sense of poise
and self-possession that I remember.
What’s the next decade going to be like for
this exceptional person?”
Nia-Malika Henderson, a senior political
reporter at CNN, has an answer. “I hope
when she has her own show she’ll have me
on it,” she said.
‘I Watch You a Lot’
Like many female reporters, Ms. Phillip has
suffered particular public ridicule by the
president.
In November 2018, after Mr. Trump fired
Jeff Sessions as attorney general and
installed Matthew Whitaker to temporarily
lead the Justice Department, Ms. Phillip
was in a gaggle of reporters outside the
White House and asked the president if he
hoped Mr. Whitaker would tamp down on
the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s
investigation. “What a stupid question that
is,” he said. “What a stupid question. I watch
you a lot, you ask a lot of stupid questions.”
In the same time period, the president
had also castigated two other Black female
reporters, saying that a question posed to
him by Yamiche Alcindor of PBS was “rac-
ist” and calling April Ryan of Urban Radio
Networks “a loser.”
This made his rebuke of Ms. Phillip into a
bigger story. But “I didn’t feel offended in
any way,” she said. “I felt like he was lashing
out because he didn’t like the question, but
sometimes the questions he doesn’t like are
the most important ones.”
She added, “He insults a lot of people, and
a lot of the time the insults aren’t true.”
Ms. Alcindor said her friendship with Ms.
Phillip had been crucial in weathering the
challenges of covering the Trump adminis-
tration. “She has your back; she’s a really,
really good person,” she said, as her voice
caught. “It’s getting me a little emotional. A
rough year like this, it puts a lot in perspec-
tive.”
Ms. Phillip sees an upside. “In some
ways, Donald Trump has made a lot of re-
porters better reporters,” she said. “The re-
lentless fact-checking you have to do with
this president is unlike anything I have ex-
perienced before. It has done away with the
practice of giving figures in Washington the
benefit of the doubt when it comes to truth-
fulness, and that’s OK, in a bipartisan way.”
In January, Ms. Phillip came under fire
when she moderated a debate between theDemocratic presidential candidates. At one
point, she turned to Senator Bernie Sanders
and asked him to address a recent CNN re-
port that he had told Senator Elizabeth War-
ren that he did not believe a woman could
win the presidency, a scoop that Ms. Warren
had confirmed.
“Why did you say that?” Ms. Phillip
asked.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t say it,”
Mr. Sanders replied.
Ms. Phillip then turned to Ms. Warren
and asked, “What did you think when Sena-
tor Sanders told you a woman could not win
the election?”
Many commentators felt Ms. Phillip
should have dropped the matter after Mr.
Sanders’s denial. The way she saw it, the
perception of the electability of women was
an important topic of inquiry and she hadthe two key figures involved in the conver-
sation on a stage in front of her. Why would-
n’t she ask them both about it? Why would
she accept one person’s denial as more valid
than another’s confirmation?
“If we reported something about Donald
Trump, confirmed by multiple sources,” she
said, “we would stand by that reporting. I
don’t think it’s any different when it’s Eliza-
beth Warren and Bernie Sanders. I think
about this a lot. Democrats, in particular,
will have to figure this out. If Democrats will
believe reporting from us about Donald
Trump, they should believe our reporting
about Bernie Sanders.”‘You’re in It!’
In June, Ms. Phillip traveled to Tulsa, Okla.,
where Mr. Trump was holding his first cam-
paign rally since the nation went into lock-
down. Before reporting on the rally, with its
much-smaller-than-anticipated turnout,
Ms. Phillip filed two pieces about the 1921
destruction of the once-affluent Tulsa
neighborhood once known as “Black Wall
Street,” and the massacre of hundreds of
Black Tulsa residents, which came after a
white woman accused a Black man of as-
sault. For many supporters of Black Lives
Matter in Tulsa, this was important rejoin-
der to sentiments the president has ex-
pressed in a Fox interview that the inequi-
ties being protested since the death of
George Floyd could be addressed with eco-
nomic prosperity.
Two months later, Ms. Phillip was chosento help anchor coverage of the Democratic
National Convention and the Republican
National Convention. And then, in October,
she got a call from Eric Sherling, one of
CNN’s executive producers. “I want to walk
you through our election night plans,” he
said.
Ms. Phillip recalled: “I was excited, but I
was stressed. I knew it was a big deal.”
She didn’t tell her parents. “I’m a really
superstitious person,” she said. Then a few
days before Election Day, her mother
called. “Did you see that election night
promo?” she asked her daughter. “You’re in
it!”
On the day before Election Day, she was
up late with her husband, Marcus Rich-
ardson, reading and worrying. “I turned to
Marcus and said, ‘I feel like this is a test and
I’m worried I’m going to fail.’ ”
Mr. Richardson, a cybersecurity consult-
ant, and Ms. Phillip have been married for
two years and together for nearly a decade.
“I think most individuals who are in a rela-
tionship and see their significant other go
through important moments and you con-
tinually see them succeed, you just have to
remind them, ‘Baby, you’ve got this,’ ” he
said.
Her colleague Ms. Bash praised Ms.
Phillip’s political knowledge and “natural
gravitas.” “It’s also so great to have another
woman to riff with and bounce things off of,”
she said. “I don’t have anything against the
dudes, I love the dudes.” But the dudes have
dominated anchor desks, including CNN’s.
It was, in fact, Ms. Bash’s on-air com-
ments about the history being made by Vice
President-elect Harris that teed Ms. Phillip
up to make her comments about the voting
power of Black women. As Ms. Phillip
spoke, said Ms. Bash, “I was recognizing
that something special was happening.”
At home with their dog, Booker T., Mr.
Richardson said he pumped his fists, know-
ing his wife was defining a key point of this
election. “Yeah baby, you let them know!”
he said to himself.
Though still busy covering the continued
drama over an election that Mr. Trump has
yet to concede, Ms. Phillip is now able to get
a decent night’s sleep and think, free of su-
perstition, about how she performed on the
biggest stage of her career thus far.
“Mostly I feel like I did what I wanted to
do, which was to be honest and straightfor-
ward and knowledgeable and present an to
tell the truth,” she said. “I didn’t go into
things wanting to stand out. I went in think-
ing I want to be a valuable member of the
team and I feel good that I did that.”Abby Phillip Is Next-Gen for CNN
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
‘In some ways,
Donald Trump
has made a lot
of reporters
better reporters.’
Top, Abby Phillip, a political
correspondent for CNN.
Above left, with Jake Tapper
and Dana Bash during
coverage of election results.
Above right, with Senator
Kamala Harris, now the vice
president-elect, in 2019. Ms.
Phillip says that covering
President Trump involves
“relentless fact-checking” that
is “unlike anything I have
experienced before.”NATE PALMER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESCNN