Australian journalist Jonathan Swan wins TV news Emmy for viral Donald Trump interview

An Australian journalist has won a huge award for a “trainwreck” interview with Donald Trump when he was still president that went viral.

Australian reporter Jonathan Swan has won a TV news Emmy award for his controversial landmark 2020 interview with Donald Trump that went viral.

The interview was described as a “trainwreck” for Mr Trump who famously replied to Swan’s questions about his handling of coronavirus with “I think it’s under control … it is what it is”.

At the time the Covid-19 death rate in the US was 1000 people each day.

Swan took out first prize in the Outstanding Edited Interview category of the 2021 News & Documentary Emmy Awards held in New York on Tuesday night.

He beat ABC News and 60 Minutes America entries for programs about Vladimir Putin, the Republicans and US District Judge Esther Salas.

The 36-year-old Sydney-born journalist, who recorded the heated encounter with Mr Trump for Axios on HBO, was given a rare sit-down one-on-one in August last year with the then president.

The interview was widely commended for the way in which he took Mr Trump to task on a range of issues

Jonathan Swan has won an Emmy for his controversial interview with Donald Trump which was described as a ‘trainwreck’ for the then US President. Picture: Axios/HBO

Swan, who is website Axios’s White House political journalist, made his name reporting in Canberra for what is now Nine Newspapers.

In 2014, Swan was awarded the prestigious Wallace Brown young achiever award for journalism after a string of scoops about taxpayer funded use by politicians.

He moved to the US to work as a Congressional aide as part of an academic fellowship and then scored a job working for the political site, The Hill.

He moved to Axios in 2016.

Jonathan Swan quizzed Mr Trump about his response to the number of Americans dying from coronavirus. Picture: Axios/HBO

Jonathan Swan's facial expressions during the interview ended up as memes on social media.

Since the Trump interview, Swan’s facial reactions have become popular memes due to his quizzical response to the former president’s insistence the US was doing better than any other country in tackling Covid-19.

Swan is the son of prominent Sydney medical reporter Norman Swan who has recently produced a Covid-19 podcast for the ABC called Coronacast.