From NPR, I'm Sam Sanders, it's been a minute.

Today we are talking politics, because the midterms are coming up, because it's always

a good time to talk politics, but also because I am here in DC for a few weeks, so why not?

In this episode, I'm asking two very smart people, one very big question.

What's it like to cover the White House in the age of Donald Trump?

I asked that question and a lot of other ones to my two guests, Katie Rogers and Jeff Bennett.

Katie is a White House correspondent for The New York Times.

We worked together years ago at The Washington Post.

You have heard her on this show before, and Jeff is a White House correspondent for NBC News.

He's an old friend from our days together on the NPR politics team.

So I'm going to be honest here and just say, I love this conversation.

Not just because I think that two of them are really swell, but because they told me so

much more than I thought they would, they talked about their work.

They talked about their lives outside of work.

They talked about how those two things never stopped colliding.

They also told me what it feels like for the White House press corps to be a character

in the president's ongoing reality show.

And they talked very openly about what they think the White House press corps is getting

wrong.

I went into this conversation thinking that I had a pretty good understanding of what

it means to cover a White House.

I did not, but I learned a lot in this chat, and I think you will too.

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