Who is the brash Aussie Jonathan Swan behind the viral Trump interview?

Who is the Australian journalist who landed the Donald Trump interview everyone is talking about and has been viewed 36 million times on Twitter?

He’s the Australian journalist who landed the interview with Donald Trump that everyone is talking about – with a Twitter clip of the chat reaching more than 36 million views.

Jonathan Swan’s facial expressions through his now viral 35 minutes with the US President have also trended on Twitter as he reacts to what has been described as Trump’s “outrageous … delusional” responses.

Swan goes between disbelieving and incredulous as Mr Trump lumbers through topics including Black Lives Matter, political rallies during a pandemic, Ghislaine Maxwell and Russia paying the Taliban to kill US troops.

The President’s dismissiveness and extraordinary responses about America’s COVID-19 death toll have lit up the internet.

Online, the Axios on HBO interview is gaining cult status with social media users likening it to a scene from Veep, Spinal Tap or a Monty Python sketch.

Commentators in the US, Britain and Australia have praised Swan for persistently grilling a floundering Mr Trump and for “listening to answers, thinking on his feet, and asking relevant follow-up questions”.

The New York Times magazine has run “The Nine Wildest Answers in Trump’s Interview With Jonathan Swan”, HuffPost UK “the five wildest moments” and Vogue “the seven craziest things Trump said”.

CNN has analysed how many false claims Trump made in the interview and Swan’s technique to elicit these remarks.

The interview has been dubbed “car crash” or “train wreck”, but in fact Trump loves it and told Swan afterwards to make sure it was broadcast in its entirety.

On social media, Swan was lauded as “one of the best live interviewers on the planet” and an “American hero”.

So who is this “American” with the Aussie accent?

Jonathan Swan’s interview with Trump has seen him praised as a ‘hero’ for persisting with questioning the US President. Picture: Axios on HBO

Jonathan Swan’s facial expressions are a trending topic on Twitter. Picture: Axios on HBO

.@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”@realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.”

Swan: “Why can’t I do that?” pic.twitter.com/MStySfkV39

— Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020

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Jonathan Swan is the national political correspondent for the Axios news site, which was launched in 2017 by the founders of Politico, veteran journalists formerly of the Washington Post.

The 35-year-old Sydney-born reporter lives in Washington DC with his American wife, Betsy Woodruff, who works as a journalist for Politico.

Known to his Australian friends as “Swanny”, he is the eldest child of a Sydney paediatrician mother, and father who is ABC health reporter Dr Norman Swan – the face of the national broadcaster’s coronavirus coverage.

Jonathan originally worked in advertising on leaving school, but switched to journalism after getting a cadetship at the Sydney Morning Herald in 2011, the year he turned 26.

He moved to Canberra to report on the 2013 Australian federal election, in which Tony Abbott defeated Kevin Rudd in a landslide for the Coalition.

Despite critics of Trump’s responses to Swan’s questions, the US President liked the interview and wanted it aired in its entirety. Picture: Axios on HBO

Swan’s responses ranged from disbelief to incredulity. Picture: Axios on HBO

‘Swanny’ looked gobsmacked at Trump’s reply. Picture: Axios on HBO

The following year, Swan won an American Australian Association fellowship to study US history and politics at Johns Hopkins University.

It was up to Swan then to find a job placement in Congress, which he did with Republican Senator Ed Royce, then head of the US Foreign Affairs Committee.

Swan decided he didn’t want to return to the comparatively small pond of Canberra politics and scored a job at Washington news site, The Hill.

When Politico’s Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei launched Axios in 2017, they poached Swan.

In the more than three years since, Swan has covered Donald Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and scooped several exclusive stories.

These include Mr Trump pulling out of the Paris climate deal, his recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the firing of his former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon.

Swan’s 2019 interview with Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was also noted for the journalist’s dogged persistence in asking Mr Kushner about whether the President was racist.

After five years reporting on American politics, Swan is now regarded as a something of a star in Washington D.C, where he and his wife are expecting their first child next month.

On a webinar aired a day after his interview with the President, Swan told former Australian ambassador to the US Joe Hockey he believes that despite doing badly in the polls, Mr Trump can still win a second term in office.

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