Voting Station

Jonathan Swan

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Commentator

The Resume

    (August 7, 1985- )
    Born in Australia
    Political reporter for the website Axios

Why he might be annoying:

    According to Ronald Kessler’s book ‘The Trump White House,’ many of Swan’s scoops for Axios (such as that the US was about to pull out of the Paris Agreement on greenhouse gases, or that Stephen Bannon would soon be fired) were the result of Donald Trump feeding him the news while asking that the information be attributed to ‘an unnamed White House official.’
    After an interview in which President Trump expressed his desire to end automatic citizenship for the children of immigrants born in the US, he was criticized for failing to point out Trump’s false statements (such as that the US is the only country to with birthright citizenship) and for seeming to endorse Trump’s belief that he could amend the Constitution via executive order (2018).
    He did a double middle-finger salute on MSNBC, as his summation of the White House counsel’s advice for how administration officials should respond to the Congressional impeachment investigation (2019).

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was presented the Wallace Brown Award for outstanding young journalist (2014) after a series of stories about the questionable use of tax funds by Australian politicians, leading to an overhaul of the rules governing Parliamentary expenses.
    He moved to the US for an academic fellowship and became an aide to Senator Ed Royce (2013).
    He apparently learned from his 2018 interview; he was widely praised two years later for asking follow-up questions to Trump’s dubious assertions about COVID-19, voting by mail, and other topics.
    His quizzical responses to Trump’s claims were dubbed ‘the face that launched a thousand memes.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 25.00% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 10 Votes: 80.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 17 Votes: 52.94% Annoying