Andrea Mitchell is celebrating her 40th year with NBC News and the queen of Washington news coverage has proclaimed President Trump the toughest she’s ever covered.

In a radio chat with C-SPAN’s Steve Scully, Mitchell suggested that Trump is a harder nut to crack that even Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who she called “very engaging.”

To Scully’s question of the one leader she found the “toughest to cover,” Mitchell concluded that it had to be Trump.

“The toughest person I’ve ever covered? It might well be Donald Trump, with whom I’ve had the least amount of contact because I don’t cover the White House, but trying to understand this president is a conundrum that I think is challenging the country,” she said.


She mentioned three others:

  • “Fidel Castro. Because he was such a mix of characteristics. He’s a dictator, he was leading a totalitarian country, but at the same time there were vulnerabilities there and he was very engaging.”
  • “Margaret Thatcher. Who could chew you out the minute you got a question out. It was Cold War geopolitics.”
  • “Ronald Reagan. Because of the, again, mix of characteristics -- engaging, so commanding his presence and so vulnerable in so many ways because he didn’t drill down and have all the details. You had to avoid the caricature, and try to figure out with every president that I’ve covered, what are the strengths, the weaknesses, not get caught up in the fray, not get caught up with cheap shots, or other things that really take away from the story you’re trying to tell.”