The Press Box - Wolf Blitzer on Covering Mideast Wars, Monica Lewinsky, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Bryan went to CNN headquarters in Washington, D.C., to talk to CNN's Wolf Blitzer! Bryan has Wolf take us through his media life through the lens of five big stories. Before that, they talk about Wolf’s upbringing and playing football in the Buffalo, New York, area and what made him decide to become a journalist. Then, the first big story they discuss is covering the Pentagon for CNN during the first Gulf War (16:17). The second is the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky controversy (29:48). Third is what he remembers about covering 9/11 (37:32). And the last two are the election of Barack Obama in 2008 (45:41), and the election of Donald Trump in 2016 (52:23). Host: Bryan CurtisGuest: Wolf BlitzerProducers: Bruce Baldwin and Isaiah BlakelyAdditional Production: Ted Tuel and Dylan Nathan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to PressBox. It's Brian Curtis, along with producers Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin, coming to you today from CNN headquarters in Washington, D.C., where I have just interviewed Wolf Blitzer. Now, before we bring on Blitzer, I want to tell you about a new press box feature called This Is Your Media Life. When you have a guest like Blitzer, who's worked here for 36 years,

we don't want to just do the conventional career retrospective interview. we want to ask him about five big stories be covered for CNN. The stories are the Gulf War in 1990 when Blitzer joined CNN to cover the Pentagon, the 1998 Monica Lewinsky, or should I say, Bill Clinton scandal, when Blitzer was covering the White House. We'll talk about 9-11. We'll talk about Barack Obama's election in 2008, when Blitzer was playing point guard for CNN on election night.

And finally, we'll talk about the event that gave us the political timeline we're still living in. Donald Trump's election is president in 2016. Settle back, relax, and repeat the mantra you hear from that bearded man on television. We are watching this very closely. Wolf Blitzer, this is your media life. Wolf, I knew you were a Bills fan when you were growing up in Buffalo. I didn't know you played linebacker when you were in high school. What kind of linebacker were you?

Not a very good linebacker, but I enjoyed it. And I had a lot of friends who were on the football team, Kenmore West Senior High School. right outside of Buffalo, New York. It wasn't our rival, Kenmore, East, senior high school. When we played them, we would always say, remember, West is best, east is least. That was our slogan. 150 pounds dripping wet? I was maybe 160, so 170.

Same basic height. It was not going to be my professional career. I read you played something called the radar defense back in those days. You know, we had a good defense, and I was always excited. when all of a sudden, when I was playing in high school football, the blitzing linebackers, the linebackers, all of that started to develop. And I would tell me, well, they named it after me, which wasn't true. Years ago in an interview with the Buffalo News, you noted that your parents were Holocaust survivors and most of their friends in Buffalo were too. How did that shape your childhood?

Well, I grew up knowing that my mom and dad had gone through the Holocaust. and it was obviously a very painful experience. I knew that all four of my grandparents, my mom's parents, my dad's parents were killed during the Holocaust, so I never knew any of my grandparents. And people always ask me, how did you get the name Wolf? My maternal grandfather's name was Wolf Zilberfuddin. That was his last name.

But his first name was Wolf. My dad's father was Isaac Blitzer. So my name is Wolf Isaac Blitzer. I was named after my two grandfathers. When did you decide you want to become a reporter? I was finishing my master's degree at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. And one of my professors in American foreign policy international relations said, what are you going to do now that you're getting a master's degree in international relations?

And my dad wanted me to go to law school, which I wasn't thrilled about. And I was thinking about various things. But he mentioned that there was an excellent program that the Reuters, news agency in London had to train graduates to become journalists. And he said, would you like to be a foreign correspondent? And I said, yeah, I'd love to be a foreign. I was always a news junkie, even as a little boy growing up in Buffalo. My mom and dad, we had dinner every night at 6.30.

We would watch Walter Cronkite and the CBS Evening News every night. And my mom and dad were news junkies. And the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, as we say. And I became a news junkie. We read the newspapers. I followed the news very news. very closely. And I never studied journalism, undergraduate or graduate. Never worked for the school newspaper, undergraduate, or graduate. But when I heard this professor say that there was a program

to train graduates to become foreign correspondents, I said, well, that could be exciting. That could be interesting. And I said, I don't think I'll be accepted. I never did any journalism. He gave me a very good recommendation. They accepted me. And so here I was accepted by the Reuters News Agency to learn how to become a foreign correspondent. And one of the programs, after a little training in London, one of the basic elements of the program was they would send these graduates to foreign bureaus of the Reuters News Agency and start working there under the guide of these experienced British foreign correspondents. And so I was excited about that opportunity. I didn't know if I be any good as a journalist. I didn't know much about it. I knew I loved, you know,

reading about the news and monitoring the news and watching the news. When I was a junior at the State University of New York at Buffalo, one summer semester, I went to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. They had a summer program that was co-sponsored by the State University of New York at Oneonta. And I applied for that. They accepted me. So I spent that summer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Learned a little Hebrew, not much. Little Hebrew. But when Reuters saw that,

that I had studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, they sent me to their bureau in Tel Aviv. And so here I am, this young graduate, no journalism experience. I'm working in Tel Aviv for Reuters. And it was basically an internship program, although they didn't call it that. The British are much more sophisticated.

And they said it was a training program. Training program. And so here I am in Tel Aviv, and there were these really veteran British journalists, older guys. Although nowadays, they probably wouldn't be that old. But in those days, I consider them to be older guys. The Vietnam War was winding down. The Middle East was winding up. So they were sending these experienced British journalists who had been in Vietnam to Tel Aviv,

to work out of the Tel Aviv Bureau because, you know, the terrorism, the wars, things were heating up. in the Middle East. And so here I am in Tel Aviv, and there was a British journalist. Actually, he was from New Zealand, Colin Bickler, a veteran British journalist. And he started to be my mentor and would take me out with him and start training me how to be a journalist. And it was a very exciting time for me. And I was learning a lot, and I really enjoyed it. And there were big stories coming out all the time. One of the first big stories that they sent me on, without a British journalist along the way, was to go across northern Sinai to the Suez Canal, where there was the first exchange of coffins between Egypt and Israel. And it was a delicate moment, and they sent me,

and I reported on that, came back and reported on that, and they thought I did a good job. And then shortly thereafter, the then German Chancellor, Willie Brandt, was making the first visit to Israel ever since the Holocaust, and it was a big deal. And his first stop, he wanted his first stop in Israel to be Masada, the mountaintop. Have you been to Israel? I have not. You never been to Masada. Masada is where Romans had this huge, atop of this 2,000-foot-high mountain. And it was a major moment, but a lot of German students had volunteered and worked on the archaeological dig at Masada. So he wanted to go there on his first stop after landing at Tel Aviv. He got on a helicopter in Israeli helicopter, and they started flying him to Masada. I had been there in the morning with a few

hundred other journalists waiting for the arrival of the German chancellor to Israel. And so we're all standing on top of this Masada mountaintop overlooking the Negev, Dead Sea, and it's right on the top there. And it's pretty flat. And so the helicopter was coming in. And as the helicopter was coming in, we saw it go down and it was almost on the ground when all of a sudden out of nowhere, a huge gust of wind comes right at the helicopter. And as the helicopters' wheels touched on top of Masada, all of a sudden the wind is pushing the helicopter towards the edge of this mountain.

And we all assume that the helicopter was going to crash 2,000 feet into the bottom. and go over because it looked like it was over. And we were freaking out. There were a few hundred journalists, German, European, American, Israeli. They were all waiting on the top for to eyewitness the arrival of the first German chancellor to visit Israel since the Holocaust. So as the helicopter is coming down, the helicopter's coming down, this huge gust of wind starts blowing it. It looks like it's going over.

And it was a miracle that happened. there had been along the side of this mountain top a three-foot wall that the Romans had built 2,000 years earlier, three-foot wall. And as the wheels were coming towards the side and we all were screaming, we thought that this was the end, that three-foot wall caught the wheels and stopped the helicopter from crashing. It was a really amazing moment. And so, and I'm an eyewitness. I'm standing there with all these other very experienced professional journalists. And all of a sudden, I have to make a decision, you know, because then the helicopter opens, the helicopter stop, the back of the helicopter is opened, and the Israel's foremost archaeologist,

E. Galiadine basically throws Ville Brant out of the back of the helicopter, because they didn't know if it could still go over. And then the foreign minister and all the big shots out of the helicopter. And I could see that Billy Brunt was alive. And I have to make a decision. Do I then go, with Egal Yadin, the archaeologist, on this tour of Masada that Willie Brant wanted to have, or do I rush off to a pay phone and break the news and report the news? And Colin Bickler, my Reuters experienced, had always said to me, Wolf, we work for a wire service, Reuters, you got to get the story, you got to get it right, but you got to get it first before AP and UPI and Jean's France Press.

And so I said, okay, I got to go report this. What happened? And so, and he always told me too when I was in Israel because he says, you never know whether you're going to see a story. Always make sure you walk around with these tokens for pay phones. In those days, there were no cell phones. There were pay phones. And when I got to Masada early that morning, I saw there was one pay phone at the bottom of Masada at a little kiosk, coffee shop or whatever. And so I got to go now from the top of Masada to the bottom of Masada, get to that pay phone and report the news.

Before any of the other wire guys get that. That's right. And when I was running off to the cable car to take me to the bottom, I see all the other journalists are now going with Willie Brandt on this tour. They weren't going to go down. So I'm the only one. I get to the cable car and the Israeli soldiers who are there say, no, no, no, no, and you can't go down. I said, look, I've worked for orders. I got to go down there and report the news.

I convince them, and they let me take this cable car to the bottom of Masada. I rushed to the pay phone, and you've got to put these tokens in Hebrew there, a simonim. You got to put these tokens in the pay phone to make a call. And I call the Tel Aviv Bureau. And fortunately, Colin Bickler, by New Zealand mentor, picks up the phone. I say, Colin, we've got a huge story, but I don't have a lot of tokens. you've got to call me back at this number. And I give him the number of the pay phone.

And within a minute or two, he calls me back at works. Now I could talk to him as long as I want because I'm not paying for it. He's paying for it out of Tel Aviv. You're old enough to remember pay phones. I do, I did. So I tell him what happened. And as I was coming down in the cable car, I wrote a few sentences of what I wanted to report. Because that's what they trained me.

You've got to get it out. The first two sentences, if there's breaking news, are the most important. because that's what we'll post right away. And so I read to him what I wrote on the cable car coming down. I said a helicopter carrying the West German Chancellor, Willie Brandt, on the first visit to Israel by a German chancellor since the Holocaust, nearly crashed as it tried to land atop Masada, the ancient Roman mountaintop archaeological dig.

all that. And then the second quick sentence was the chancellor was shaken but unhurt. I give that those two sentences to Colin Bickler. He says, Wolf, are you sure? And I said, Colin, I'm an eyewitness. I saw the whole thing. And he said, you're sure he was shaken but unhurt? I said, yes. He was clearly shaken because when I ran up to see him, he was shaking, but he was unhurt. He wasn't, he didn't crash or anything like that. And then he said, okay, I'm going to move that. He moves it, and all of a sudden, it's headlines, and not just in Germany or in the United, all over the world, it's headlines, Reuters, and it's by Wolf Blitzer, Reuters correspondent. So that was the first really huge story that I had,

and it got big pickup in the New York Times, the Washington Post, everybody was reporting. Because I did it first. It was a big, big story. And in those days, I didn't know what breaking news was, but I know what it is now. And that was breaking news. A true world exclusive. Yeah, it was really major breaking news. And so I, then after we're done with the first two sentences and they're out in the world and we're getting enormous pickup, I give him some more color, some more details of what happened, what he's doing now and all that.

And it was just a big, big event for me. And for Reuters, the chairman of the board of Reuters the next day had a conference call with all the top leadership. and he invited me to listen in. I listened in, and he made a point of saying, our correspondent on the scene, Wolf Blitzer, broke the story, reported it first, and we were picked up all over the world, and we want to thank Wolf for doing that.

It was just, for me, it was very exciting, and Reuters was then ready to give me a full-time job because of that. But it was just one of the most exciting moments of my journalistic career, and I was really excited about that. Tell me if I got this right. You got that job in Tel Aviv with Reuters

because you spoke a little Hebrew. And then later the Jerusalem Post sends you to Washington to become the bureau chief. Because I spoke English. Because you spoke English. I was, the Jerusalem Post is an English language newspaper. And I met the editors, Ari Rath and Irwin Franklin. And I mentioned that someday I want to go back to the United States and they said, well, we have an opening for our Washington correspondent. And I said, well, I'd be interested in that.

And they hired me and they gave me that job. I came back to the United States and became the Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post. It was an exciting adventure for me. I had been in Israel. I knew what was going on there. But I was also a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., not of Baltimore, in Washington. And so I knew a lot about the history of U.S. foreign policy and U.S. international relations. And so it was a perfect assignment for me, and I was ready to do it. It brings us to 1990 in the first of these five big stories we're going to talk about today. You were 42 years old.

You'd work for nearly 20 years in print at that point. How'd you get hired by CNN to cover the Pentagon? CNN was impressed by the fact that I was breaking news for the Jerusalem Post and was getting picked up by the wire services. And several times they invited me to come on and report on some breaking news story. I had broken a lot of the details of the Jonathan Pollard spy scandal. I eventually wrote a book about that. And it was entitled Territory of Lies.

Harper Collins published it, and it did really well. And CNN started inviting me regularly to be an analyst, a commentator, a guest on CNN. And I did that for a while. And then at some point, I get a call from Ed Turner, no relation to Ted Turner, who was in charge of news at CNN and invited me to have dinner with him and Bill Headline, who was then the Washington Bureau Chief. And they said, Wolf, you know,

you've been doing an excellent job breaking all these stories for the Jerusalem Post. We'd like you to start breaking some stories for CNN. And so I said, well, I've never thought about TV reporting. I'm a print reporter. They said, you'll learn it. It's not that complicated. And they invited me to become their Pentagon correspondent, military affairs correspondent was my legal title.

And I started for CNN on May 8th, 1990, as CNN's Pentagon military affairs correspondent, thinking it was going to be a pretty slow beat. The Cold War was winding down. The U.S. was closing military bases all over the country. And I said, well, it's probably not going to be much news, but I'll do it, learn TV, learn how to report the news and all that. And so that was May 8th, 1990. On August 1st, 1990, a guy by the name of Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait.

And all of a sudden, Operation Desert Shield starts. And I'm at the Pentagon. And of course, I'm on the air 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The 82nd Airborne has just been activated. I'm reporting all this news about how the U.S. was getting ready to go to war. And CNN was a relatively new operation. but all of a sudden people were tuned in because we would take all the Pentagon briefings live and I was live all the time and people started watching CNN in big numbers.

You know, when Ted Turner started CNN in 1980, 10 years earlier, he was ridiculed. They called it the chicken noodle news and all that CNN. But now all of a sudden, everybody was watching CNN, not just in the U.S. but around the world. Ted Turner always wanted CNN to be seen around the world because he was an idealist. And he always believed if people all over the world were watching the same news, maybe it would be a more peaceful world. And so people were watching CNN like crazy. And then they're watching me. And I'm reporting the news.

And then, of course, Operation Desert Shield becomes Operation Desert Storm. The war begins. The U.S. starts moving in. and we were the only television network that kept our reporters in Baghdad. This is Bernie Shaw in that crew. Bernie Shaw, Peter Arnett, and John Holloman, and our, you know, camera crews. And they stayed, even though I was at the Pentagon and Dick Cheney, who was the Secretary of Defense, and Colin Powell, General Colvin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both called me

and told me, Wolf, you got to get your guys out of Baghdad. They're at the El Rashid Hotel, which was the... main hotel in Baghdad. And we're going to bomb that hotel because a lot of Iraqi military intelligence is there. And I said, oh my God. So I told by bosses that I just got these calls from Cheney and Powell advising us to get our people out of Baghdad because, you know, it's going to be dangerous. And I told them and Ted Turner started getting calls too. But he made a decision. You know what? I'm going to check with Peter Arnett, with Bernie Shaw, and with John Holloman, and see what they want to do. And all three of them said, we want to stay.

We'll move out of the El Rashid Hotel, but we want to stay. Good decision. Yeah. And all the other news networks, all the television news networks pulled out their people. They were getting the same warnings from Baghdad. And we were the only television news network that stayed in Baghdad as the war started. And we all remember Bernie Shaw, as the war started saying, the skies over Baghdad have been illuminated. And everybody was watching CNN.

Everybody was, you know, all these countries were taking our live coverage and dumping out of their own, you know, domestic news organizations, whether in Brazil or Argentina. And, you know, we had huge audience all over the world, now a huge audience in the United States. all the major cities were dumping out of their local news and carrying CNN, which was a big deal for them to do that. A big moment. It was a huge moment, and everybody was watching us and asked me this question. When did you realize, Wolf, that you were becoming famous? When did you realize, Wolf, that you were becoming famous? I was giving you a good question.

Very good. Thanks for that question. You're a pro. I knew that people were watching me because I was being stopped on the street. Wolf, Wolf, all of a sudden I was being recognized. But I really didn't appreciate that I had become famous until I get a call from Johnny Carson, the host of the Tonight Show, inviting me to come on the Tonight Show and be his guest. And I'm on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and he says, Wolf, you're a household name right now. I watch you every day. And he asked me all these questions about what it's like to report the news.

And it was just a moment. I'm a guy who grew up watching Johnny Carson, and all of a sudden I'm a guest on the show. I walk out, and he's introducing me. comes over, shakes by hand. It was just an exciting moment. And that's what I knew I was becoming famous. I read this in August 1990 when you announced that Saddam's Republican guards have invaded Kuwait. You said on the air, you did not think the United States would be inclined to have a military response to that. Initially, I did, but it quickly changed as things were unfolding. And somebody from the Pentagon called you and said,

immediately, immediately, don't say this. Immediately, I get a call from a very, very high official saying, Wolf, they're all watching you in Baghdad. And I got to tell you, when you say you don't think the U.S. is going to launch a military strike, they think you're speaking for the United States. They don't know the difference between a real news organization and the government. They think you're saying we're not going to go to war. And so this is going to cause a lot of problems. So they said, we're not ruling it out.

I'm not telling you we are, but we're not ruling it out. Don't say that. And so I didn't say it anymore. And I made it clear that the possibility of war was very, very real. And people were freaking out because they didn't know what was going to happen. And it was just a huge, huge moment. That's a power of television moment. Because if you'd written that in the newspaper, it wouldn't have been taken the same way.

People were saying it on television. People were watching CNN. And it was just an amazing moment. And just for me, it was very powerful. This is one of your second big moments when it comes to the power of television. 177, April 77, you asked a question of Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president. What happened there? Well, at that time, that was before I joined CNN.

I was the Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post. And Jimmy Carter was president. He took office on January 20, 177. And in early March, he invites Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, to come to Washington for a meeting. I think it was Jimmy Carter's first meeting with a foreign leader. So Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian leader, is in Washington for this big meeting with Jimmy Carter. And after the meetings are over, Sadat is staying at Blair House, which is the official residence for foreign visitors, official foreign visitors across the street from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue.

And the Egyptian embassy announces that Sadat's going to have a news conference the next morning. And I didn't know if I would be invited as the one. I'm American, I'm not Israeli, but I'm the Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post. I get a call from Ashraf Gurbal, who was the Egyptian ambassador to the United States and a friend of mine. And it became a source, a good guy. And he says, Wolf, we would like you to come to this news conference. I said, great, I'll be there. So I go to Blair House the next morning.

And Sadat delivers what I thought to be a really powerful opening speech statement about how much he wants peace. It's so important. And then he opens it up, and it gives a nice statement about U.S. Egyptian relations. And then he opens it up to questions. And when he does, he says, I'll take some questions. I raise my hand. And Ashraf Gurbal, the ambassador, is calling on journalists to ask questions. Mr. Blitzer, go ahead with your question.

I thank you, Ambassador. And I said to Sadat, President Sadat, you seem so sincere in your quest for peace with Israel. Why not do something about that? and change the atmosphere over there, have an exchange of journalists or scholars or athletes to have some direct contact between Israelis and Egyptians. And he looked at me and he said, I have no problem with that,

but my people, he said, are not getting ready for that. After so many years of warfare and hatred and death and destruction, that will all have to wait. And I thought that was a pretty good answer. And it was the banner headline the next morning, not only in my newspaper, the Jerusalem, but all these newspapers. It was a very, very good answer I thought that he gave. Flash forward, not too long afterwards, Anwar Sadat announces he's ready to go to Jerusalem

to address the Knesset, Israel's parliament, and try to make peace with Israel. And it was a huge moment. Everybody was freaking out. And on his departure from Cairo, a journalist said, Mr. President, why are you going to Israel now? And he said, and I'm paraphrasing his answer, was he said, when I was in Washington a few weeks ago, a journalist asked me about direct contact between Israelis and Egyptians. At the time, I didn't think my people were ready. But he then said, but since then the idea, and he goes like this, has germinated in my mind. And I now think my people are ready and I'm ready.

And when I asked that question, by the way, I was thinking of ping pong diplomacy that the U.S. and China had practiced leading up to the Estableness. of relations between the U.S. and China. And he said, now I'm ready to go. And he cited my question to him as giving him that, you know, that momentum. All of a sudden, everybody wants to know who was that reporter who asked them that question? And all of a sudden, I'm getting calls. The Washington Post, the New York Times. They knew it was me.

And they wanted to interview me about why I asked that question. and how I feel about all that. There was a headline in the Washington Post. In those days, it was a print edition. Have you ever seen a print edition? Yeah, I saw one this morning, but I'm one of the few people who did, I think. They too. So the headline in the Washington Post in the style section of the Washington Post.

It was a big headline of the picture of me and Sadat, the reporter who started it all. Not bad publicity. That was great publicity. And then the New York Times had a headline, the best question since Ramsey's the second or whatever. It was like, that was a big article about the reporter from the Jerusalem Post who asked that question. My old friend Bernard Gwitzman, who was the diplomatic reporter for the New York Times, wrote that story. And here I see a Washington Post story about my question, the New York Times story about my question. I'm getting a lot of pickup, including CNN, you know,

when they started, but this was before CNN. And so it was just an exciting moment for me that I had played a little role. But it really didn't hit me. until a few weeks later, the Jerusalem Post sends me to Cairo. And they said, we want you to go to Cairo and see if you can get an interview with Sadat. I went to Cairo, flew to Cairo. And remember, I'm not an Israeli citizen, I'm a U.S. citizens, so easy to get in there. This is before Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty. And I'm in Cairo.

And I do an interview with Sadat, and he tells me how my question was so important to him. And it was just an exciting, riveting moment for me that, you know, I played a little tiny role in getting the Egyptian leader. And remember, in those days, Egypt was the number one threat to Israel. I had the largest military in the region. You know, it was the biggest threat to Israel. And all of a sudden, Anwar Sadat is declaring he's ready to make peace with Israel. And the momentum started. And then Jimmy Carter eventually picked it up and invited Sadat and Monachembeg and the Israeli Prime Minister to come to Camp David.

and that's where they negotiated what was called the Camp David Accords, and that eventually resulted in the signing of a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt at the White House. And I was invited to the White House for that signing ceremony, and I was invited to the White House for the state dinner that Jimmy Carter had honoring Sadat and Monacham Began. And it was just a powerful moment in my career. But that was a few years before I joined CNN. But it was one of the reasons I think that CNN got to notice me. All right. Story number two, 1998, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. You are by this point, CNN's White House correspondent, of the Pentagon correspondent. When was the first time you heard that Clinton and Lewinsky might have had a relationship? Well, the drudge report had been reporting a bunch of things. There was a lot of speculation. I didn't have any reason to believe it was true. Until one day, Monica Lewinsky's lawyer, Bill Ginsburg, comes to Washington. He's in Los Angeles.

and calls me and says, Wolf, can we have lunch? And I said, Monica Lewinsky's lawyer is calling me. And he was staying at the Cosmos Club in Washington. And I said, of course, I go there, we have lunch. And he starts telling me about Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. And after lunch, it was the Sunday of the Super Bowl.

And I said, where are you watching the Super Bowl? And he said, I guess here. I said, well, do you want to come to my house and watch the Super Bowl with me? He said, yeah. So I put him in my car and we drive over to my house. And as we're leaving the Cosmos Club, the paparazzi are following us. They didn't know who I was, but they knew who he was. And they thought, you know, I was taking him to meet with Monica Lewinsky, which I wasn't.

But they were all following me in their motorcycles and their cars. And I'm driving down Massachusetts Avenue, made a right turn on Wisconsin Avenue, if you know the area. And they're still behind me. and I'm saying, I don't want these paparazzi following us to my house. So I did something that I wasn't exactly sure I was doing the right thing, but I get to a street light, and they're all behind me. And as the light is getting ready to turn green, before it does, I make a quick left turn. The light's still red, and it goes straight ahead.

And then there's a little alley right after I make a left turn. And I'd go into the alley and I hide. And I said to Bill Gansberg, we're waiting here until the paparazzi just, and they couldn't find me. They were driving straight ahead and looking different ways. And so I didn't leave that area until I knew for sure that there was nobody following us. And then I drove to my house. And then we spent the afternoon talking. And he basically told me, you know, what was going on with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

It was just for me, eye opening. And it was a huge story. That's some cloak and dagger stuff by you pulling into that alley. I know. I just did it. It was a gut instinct that I had. I got to get these paparazzi off of my trail. I read about this February 1998. Clinton is having a joint press conference with of all people, Tony Blair. The questions are mostly about Lewinsky Clinton as denying the relationship with that point. And you stood up and essentially asked him what? I said something along the lines. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I said something along the lines of, with all due respect, Mr. President,

let me ask you this question. If you could say something right now to Monica Lewinsky, what would you say? And I remember he looked at me. He paused for a while. And he looked at me and he said, that's good, that's good. But I'm not going to get discussed this. And he refused to talk about it. He's saluting you for being clever.

He thought I was being clever. That's good. That's good. He knew who I was. But I had spent some quality time when he was running for president in Little Rock, Arkansas, covering his campaign. So I got to meet a lot of his top aides. And it was just an exciting moment.

But, you know, he didn't want to say anything about Monica Lewinsky. When I think of the Lewinsky story, I think of two camps that were working reporters, one being Bill Clinton's allies in the White House. What do you remember about your interactions with them? I remember getting calls from everybody. It was just, you know, I was then CNN's White House correspondent. And so I had to go out to the North Law. of the White House and do live shots and report the news. But everybody wanted to, you know,

get my ear and talk to me. And it was just a powerful time. It was a huge story. Can I star in his investigators with the other camp? Did you hear from them regularly? Yes, I heard from all of them. And I heard from Bill Clinton's lawyers and everybody. They were, they were all wanted to make sure that I had their side of the story. What did you think that story was about back in 1998? Well, until I got all the details, I mean, I didn't think that Bill Ginsburg was made. making up all the awful details of what was going on. And until I heard that firsthand from somebody like him, I didn't know what to make of it,

but then I obviously discovered. And then Bill Ginsburg at one point invites me out to dinner at a restaurant in Washington used to be around called Duke Zeberts. I don't know if you remember that restaurant. I've heard of it. Yeah, and we went to dinner and guess who shows up to join us for dinner? I didn't know she was coming. Monica Lewinsky.

Oh, wow. And that's when I met Monica Lewinsky. You were way inside on this whole thing. Yeah, but they were all watching me and they all wanted to, you know, influence me. If during the Gulf War, people were marveling at how CNN was covering the story around the clock, in 98, you started to hear the opposite critique. You guys are covering this story too much. What was your response back then?

Which story too much? The Lewinsky story. My reaction was the same as it's always been when we get criticized. And it's what Ted Turner told me. when he hired me in 1990, he said, Wolf, remember, we're the cable news network. And remember, news, capital N, capital E, capital W, capital S. We report the news. The news comes first at CNN.

We want to report it fairly and accurately. And if you're going to report, I remember him saying this to me, if you're going to report something negative about someone, make sure you, before you put that on the air, you go to that person and get his reaction or her reaction. because we want to be fair, we want to be responsible, and if possible we want to be first with the news. And that was my, and I still feel, to this day, 35 years later, I'm still doing the same thing.

I'm reporting the news fairly accurately, and if possible, breaking it first. Story number three, September 11, 2001. You'd been a reporter now. You were also an anchor of late edition on Sundays, Wolf Blitzer reports during the week. How'd you become an anchor, CNN? I was anchoring, you know, filling in a little bit, doing some anchoring.

And I never wanted to be an anchor. I never knew about being an anchor. I was barely a TV correspondent. But CNN said, we want you to give it a shot. So they started inviting me to anchor some shows. And then they invited me to be the anchor, the host of our Sunday morning show at that time. It was called Late Edition, the last word in Sunday Talk. But before I did late edition, I did a Sunday morning show called Inside Politics.

And I remember vividly, welcome to Inside Politics Sunday, because it was on Sunday morning. Welcome to Insight Politics Sunday. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. Inside Politics Sunday. The events, the issues, the battles, the bites. That was our slogan. That's a good reading. The events, the issues, the battles, the bites.

and I started doing that and I got good feedback, positive reviews. The ratings were good. At that point, they wanted me to become the host of our major Sunday morning political talk show, late edition, which I then did, and I loved doing that. And it was just a great moment because it wasn't just reporting all the news, but it was inviting newsmakers on and asking them serious but tough questions, fair questions, but tough questions, and I began to enjoy that. What do you remember about the morning of September 11th?

That morning I was home. My wife and I were in the kitchen. We were having a little breakfast. We have a TV in the kitchen. And all of a sudden, they're showing, you know, shots of buildings in New York looked like, you know, they're being damaged. And I didn't know what it was. And then they told us plane had crashed into this building.

And I say, shit, that's huge. And then I got a call from somebody at CNN. Wolf, can you come down to the Bureau right away and start with our, help us with the coverage? Of course, I put on a suit and tie, got in the car, drove to CNN. And as I'm coming to CNN, which is near Union Station on 1st Street, Northeast, traffic was ridiculous. There were cop cars all over the place. Because by the time I was leaving my house and the time I got to CNN, the Pentagon had been,

attacked. It was 9-11. And there was concern that U.S. Capitol and CNN Bureau was very close to the U.S. Capitol. The U.S. Capitol was going to be attacked. The White House was going to be attacked. We didn't know what was going on. And so I got within a few blocks of CNN, but I couldn't move. The traffic was terrible. Cops were stopping everybody. So I moved, I pulled my car into a parking spot, which was legal, and I decided to walk. So I walked the final few blocks, and I get to the Bureau and they go up and as soon as they get there, they get on television. And as our former Pentagon correspondent, you know, and all that. And so I'm here.

And they were, and the concern was the Pentagon was going to be the next target. And so that was what I remember. What's the protocol for you during breaking news? Can you be out of touch? Do you have to be in touch at all times to be summoned to the Bureau? You're supposed to be in touch all the time because you never know when there's going to be major breaking news. So you can't take like a 20-mile walk in West Virginia.

without a cell phone. You have to, it constricts your life a little bit, what you can do. I don't know if we had a cell phone in those days even. But nowadays, you got to walk around. This is a cell phone. Yes. You got to have a cell phone. A few years ago, my wife and I were on vacation in London.

And there was a coup in the Soviet Union, a KGB coup. And CNN immediately was looking for me. My cell phone wasn't on. So they called my wife and she said, CNN's looking for you. And they said, they want me to go to the London Bureau and start anchoring our coverage about this failed coup. And that was just one of several times after the first Gulf War when I finally get a chance to take a vacation. And I've been working seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Finally, after the first Gulf War, my wife and I take a vacation to Hilton Head, South Carolina with our little daughter at that time.

And we just get to Hilton Head, and we're in Hilton Head, South Carolina. And the night that we get there, Tom Johnson, the president of CNN, calls me, Wolf, where are you? I said, Hilton Head, South Carolina. He said, there's breaking news in the Soviet Union. And we need you to go to the Soviet Union. Oh, wow. And I said, you need me to go to the so. We want you to anchor our coverage from the Soviet Union

because it looks like the whole Soviet Union could collapse. And I said, when do you want me to go? He said, tomorrow morning. There's a flight from Washington. I said, well, I'm in Houghton, South Carolina right now. He said, we know, and there's a flight that can take you to Washington. And tomorrow morning, you'll fly from Washington, Dulles, to Moscow. It makes a stop in Munich or someplace.

And I told my wife, and I said, Why don't you stay here with our daughter and I'll go back to Washington? Was that a tricky conversation with your wife? No, she was very understanding. You've been waiting months for a vacation and now I've got to go to Moscow. Now I've got to go to Moscow. And the interesting thing was when I tell her that, she said, well, we're going to go back with you. We're not staying here by ourselves.

So all of us flew back to Washington that night. And the next morning, I flew off to Moscow. And as soon as I land in Moscow, that was a little. long flight because you've got to go to Munich and Moscow. Sure. As soon as I land in Moscow, I get off the plane and the CNN producer comes up

and he says, Wolf, we're going to a live shot for you at the Kremlin. You're about to do a live interview with the new Soviet defense minister, Air Marshal Yevgeny Shepashnikov. And it's going to be live on CNN.

And he's someplace else, but we're going to do He doesn't speak English, but we're going to do simultaneous translation, and they want you to do this interview about what's happening in the Soviet Union. It was then still the Soviet Union. It was a big deal. And I said, great. And I do this live interview with Air Marshal Yvesh, and he Shepashnikov.

And it was very powerful. It goes out for almost an hour on live television. Everybody is watching this interview because they want to know what's happening in the Soviet Union. And it got really good playback and everybody loved it. It was really good. And I was just very honored that CNN wanted me to do the interview. And I did the interview and it was great. And after the interview, he takes me into the Kremlin with him and it takes me into a secure room where all of his generals are, these generals of all these awards. And he says, generals, this is Mr. Blitzer from CNN. And we have to thank CNN because without CNN's coverage of the

events leading up to what's going on now, all of us would have been in prison or in Siberia. But CNN showed the world the demonstrations on the street in favor of democracy. And they really did an important job. And we are grateful to CNN for its coverage. And I appreciated that very much. but a few days later, Gorbachev is going to have an event, and they invited me to the event. And they also invited Tom Johnson, the president of CNN, to this event, where Gorbachev was going to sign a document ending 74 years of the Soviet Union, 74 years of communist rule in the Soviet Union and granting independence to all the republics, you know, whether Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, all the republics of the Soviets of the Soviet Union, Union became independent countries. And they invited us to come to this signing ceremony. It was just a historic moment. I'm sitting there near the front row with Tom Johnson and others.

And it was just a powerful, powerful moment for me because when Gorbachev took out his pen to sign this document ending the Soviet Union and going back to just being Russia, ending the Soviet Union, he goes to sign it and the pen doesn't work. No. ink and he says, no ink or whatever he's saying in Russia, I need a new pen. Tom Johnson, who's sitting in the front row who had been invited as a special guest, takes out his CNN pen and gives it to Gorbachev. And Gorbachev uses the CNN pen to sign this document ending the Soviet Union. And Gorbachev wants to keep it, but he gives it back to Tom Johnson.

And it's hanging up in Tom Johnson's office, the pen that ended the Soviet Union. I was going to say, you cannot keep that. Because that's not a very special pen to me. And it was just a powerful moment for all of us as we watched the history unfold and the role that CNN had played in the coverage that we had in Moscow leading up to this moment. And the last week or so before the signings, I was in Moscow because CNN had sent me again. And it was just an extremely historic moment to see the end of the Soviet Union. Our fourth story is the election of Barack Obama in 2008. What were your first impressions of Barack Obama, the politician?

I was always impressed with Barack Obama when he was running, even when he was in Congress. And I got to know him a little bit not well. But he was always very impressive. He knew all the subjects. Whenever I would do a little interview with him, I could ask him about any subject. He was more than prepared to answer at Spartley. and right away. And he was just all over the most important issues of the day.

And it was just, for me, it was just very powerful. And I saw him develop more as he decides that he's going to run for president. And one of the really historic moments in my career was the night he was elected. I was anchoring CNN's coverage, election night coverage. And we would only make a projection of a winner when, all the electoral votes are counted. And it wasn't until 11 o'clock Eastern, 11 p.m. Easterns that night when the polls closed in California, Oregon, and Washington State, when he would go over the number that he would need to be elected. And at that moment,

it was like 1101, maybe 1130. I go on the air and I say, I'm paraphrasing, but along these lines, and CNN can now project that Barack Obama, will become the next president of the United States. He will become the first African-American president of the United States. And people all over were watching. And because we had given, apparently our people had given notification to various countries that at 11 o'clock Eastern time that night, CNN's going to have a major news. And all these countries were dumping out of their own, you know, domestic programming

and carrying CNN live. And remember, CNN is seen, and Ted Turner always wanted this, not just in the United States, but CNN International is seen in more than 150 countries around the world. So we had a huge audience to begin with, but it was amazing that night. We later estimated that maybe a billion people were watching at 11 o'clock at night when I said CNN projects Barack Obama will become the next president. And the reaction was unbelievable because for days and weeks afterwards, wherever I went, especially older African Americans, black people would come up to me and say, Mr. Blitzer, thank you, thank you. And I said, well, you're welcome, but I just reported the dues.

They were giving me credit, as if I had made it happen. And they would all say something along the lines. It wasn't until you said it on CNN that we actually believed that Barack Obama could be elected president. We never thought there would be a black president of the United States until we heard you say it. And that just was so meaningful to me to hear that kind of reaction. It was just powerful. One footnote to that night is Jessica Yellen, your former colleague, was in Grant Park at Obama's victory speech, and she appeared with you on the set in New York as a hologram. Yes. Like the Zoom call of its day. It was a big technological moment in 2008. It's like we have a

hologram here, beaming across the bench. She was far away, but we pretended. She was standing right next thing. You could talk to her like that. And another very, very momentous occasion for me was when CNN sent me to North Korea. Bill Richardson, who was then the governor of New Mexico, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., was going to try to bring some Americans who may be held there home. And he invited me to go with him. I said, of course, CNN wanted me to go.

So I'm in Pyongyang. I go to North Korea with Bill Richardson. And within a day or two that I'm there, he's going to a meeting with the top leadership of North Korea, the foreign minister and others. And he asked me to come along with him with my camera crew. And we're inside this meeting. And we're shooting it and I'm listening.

And Bill Richardson, after the meeting, brings over some of the leaders of North Korea to meet me. I'm standing in the back. I'm meeting a foreign minister, and all of a sudden, foreign minister who speaks English, says, Mr. Blitzer is what he says to me, you are as powerful as the president of the United States. And I said, well, with all due respect, minister, I'm not as powerful as the president of the United States. You are as powerful as the president of the United States. And I said to him, I don't think so.

And then he says, yes, because you have situation room, and he. he has situation room, and only the two of you have situation room. You are as powerful as the president of the United States. And what dawned on me is when I was staying at this official guest house in North Korea and looked out my window, and I see a huge satellite dish in the courtyard there. At that time, I didn't know, but I later found out that Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, a few years earlier, was trying to bring peace to the world. He goes to North Korea, and he brings, as a gift to the North Korean leadership, a huge satellite dish, CNN's satellite dish, so they can watch CNN.

He assumed if they were watching CNN, it would be more peaceful Korean peninsula. And I'm in my room, and I get there, I turn on the TV in my room, and I can see CNN, and I can see some, you know, North Korean television, which I didn't understand. But I see CNN, and I'm saying to me, I said, wow, CNN. I can watch CNN in Pyongyang in North Korea. And later they tell me, you can watch CNN because of the satellite dish, the CNN that Ted Turner brought as a gift to North Korea. And it was just a powerful moment for me, knowing that the leadership in CNN, the leadership of North Korea were watching CNN.

You explained to him, it's just the name of the show, the situation. I don't actually have an official situation. I said to myself, let him think I was powerful. as the president of the United. But it was a great six days in North Korea. I did a documentary that aired on CNN. But at the end, it was very scary because there was some concern that they weren't going to let Bill Richardson and me out of the country.

We're going to be stuck there. And we were thinking, how do we get out? Do we drive across the demilitarized zone and go to South Korea? Do we drive across another border towards China? And eventually they let us out. But we were nervous for a few days at the very, very end. Finally, Donald Trump's election in 2016. You interviewed Trump during the 2012 campaign when he was peddling the birtherism nonsense.

What did you make of Trump in those days as a political figure? I interviewed him many times when he was just a business band. And I would always go up to New York and we would meet in Trump Tower and we would do a long interview. And I was getting a lot of criticism from people. Why are you giving Trump all this publicity? Why are you giving – well, I said because, you know, he's an important player. First of all, he's a major business leader. But second of all, if he ever runs for president, who knows maybe he could be elected.

And I just want to make sure that we're a news organization. We're staying on top of the news. And so I spent a lot of quality time with him, you know, just interviewing him when I would go up when he was just a private business man in New York. 2016, was that the most surprised you ever were on election night? When he won, you mean? Yeah. I don't think I was the most surprised, but I mean, I could see it coming because our polls were pretty accurate. Your polls were pretty accurate.

CNN's polls? Yeah. In 2016? When he beat Hillary Clinton? When he beat Hillary Clinton? I mean, all of a sudden, I'm not talking about the polls leading up. I'm talking about the exit polls that were coming in. And all of a sudden, we could see him doing, you know, really well.

And I said, you know, he might win. And you have John King on the magic wall at that point. And John King was with me in the magic wall. telling us, you know, if you go to this county outside of Wisconsin someplace, you know, Trump is doing really well. I said, well, maybe I would. What I remember about watching you that night is, you know, Florida got called early for Trump. Hillary had poured lots and lots of money into Florida. And that was kind of a moment of moment. Oh, wow, this is happening. I'm glad you got a good memory. You know, I remember election nights here and there. After the election, you and fellow anchors,

Lester Holt, George Stephanoplas, went to an off-the-record briefing at Trump Tower. Do you remember what that event was like? I remember when Trump was elected president and he was going to give his first state of the union address, he would invite the TV anchors for lunch at the White House. And I remember that luncheon because I was invited and all the major NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, all the anchors were invited. And he would tell us a little bit about what he was planning on saying

at that first state of the union address. And I was sitting at my little seat, this table, right across from Trump, and the other anchors were all around. But right next to me was Ivanka. And she was having some sort of grilled salmon. So when they were serving those, I said, I'll have what she's having. I was going to say, now who has a good memory? You remember her grilled salmon? I remember the grilled salmon she was having.

But then we were all asking us good, serious, substantive questions. You can talk about this. What are you going to say about that? But at the end of the whole luncheon, and that was about two hours, he looked at me and said, Wolf, you and I have spoken many times. We're wrapping us up now. I got to go, get ready for the State of the Union. But is there anything else you want to ask me, anything else you want to say before we all wrap up?

And I said, well, Mr. President, you and I have known each other for a long time. I've interviewed many times. And I just want to say, with all due respect, I wish you would stop calling us referring to all the TV, main TV anchors, I wish you would stop calling us the enemy of the American people. And he looked at me and he said, but you are the enemy of the American people. And I looked at him and I said, but Mr. President, we love the American people. We're not the enemy of the American people. We love the American people. And that's why we do what we're doing to report the news, to inform the American people, to educate the American people about what's

going on. So please stop calling us the enemy of the American people. And he got up at And that was that. And he's attacked CNN ever since, basically. Basically. Including her colleague, Caitlin Collins, this month. And I honestly believe, you know, as we love the American people. That that's why we're doing what we're doing. Two last ones for you.

I was watching you on CNN this morning. You were talking 36 years after you started here about a scandal that may involve Bill Clinton and possible American intervention in the Middle East. Does it ever strike you that you are doing versions of the same story over and over and over again? when Bill Clinton has been called to do his deposition on the Epstein files and all that. And I said, I think I've been part of that story before, but I have no idea. He says he has never got involved in any of the wrongdoing or anything like that. And so we'll see what he says tomorrow when he does that deposition under sworn testimony.

And the possibility that in the next few days or whatever soon, the U.S. could be launching a war against Iran. And I've been there before, so I know that's a huge story, too. And so the news business is never dull. No. When did you start using the phrase, we will be watching this very closely? Or when did I start saying, happening now, breaking news? I say all those. I mean, when I saw, when I see what's going on with Iran,

I've got a guest like Admiral James Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied commander or General Wesley Clark, Admiral. of Reyes General Clark. I asked them all, how close are we to war? And they can us answer. But I always say we'll be watching this very closely. Finally, if you'd remain a print reporter, you'd have probably written a couple more books and you'd have a stack of print awards now. What do you take away from 36 years on cable news? I love every day. I love getting up every morning and still reporting the news. And I feel blessed that I can make a living. And my dad always said to me, when I told him I wanted to be a

journalist. He was worried. He said, a journalist. Can you make a living being a journalist? He was worried because he wanted to be going to law school. It was a good question. Yeah. And I said, well, let's see. But then he said to me, if you can combine your interest and your passion with your livelihood, you will do it a lot better. You'll wake up every day, look forward to going to work. So if this, and he knew I was a news junkie. So if you could make a living being a news junkie, I support you. And all these years, I've made a living being a news junkie. I love what I'm doing.

I still love it. So I'm going to continue doing it as long as I can. Wolf Blitzer, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you very much. That's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic. By Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin.

And special thanks as well to Ted Tool and Dylan Nathan. Coming up on the press box regular programming, Joel Anderson's back here on Thursday. And you know, we will have more lukewarm takes about the media. Don't do that.