PR Masters Series

PR Masters Series


Guests, CNN’s Abby Phillip, Political Correspondent, and Manu Raju, Senior Congressional Correspondent – That Said with Michael Zeldin

July 26, 2021

 

Join Michael Zeldin as he speaks with CNN’s Abby Phillip, Political Correspondent, and Manu Raju, Senior Congressional Correspondent, to break down what to expect at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and on Capitol Hill. How will this new government work, if at all? Who will hold the keys to success or stalemate?
Guests
Abby Phillip
Political Correspondent, CNN
Abby Phillip is a CNN Political Correspondent covering the 2020 presidential election. She is on the campaign trail but is based in Washington, D.C. She joined the network in 2017 to cover the Trump Administration and served as White House Correspondent through 2019. In January 2020, she moderated CNN's Democratic Presidential Debate in Iowa.
Phillip joined CNN from The Washington Post where she most recently served as a national political reporter, covering the White House. While at The Washington Post, Phillip wrote on a wide range of subjects related to the Trump White House, including efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, the president's overseas trip to Poland and Germany for his first G-20. As a campaign reporter during the 2016 election Phillip extensively covered Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
Phillip was also a general assignment reporter for the Washington Post, where she covered domestic an international news including the tragic Charleston, S.C. and San Bernardino massacres. Before joining the Washington Post, Phillip was a digital reporter for politics at ABC News. She has also covered the Obama White House for POLITICO as well as campaign finance and lobbying.
Phillip was raised in Bowie, Md. and is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in Government. She currently lives in Washington with her husband.

Manu Raju
Senior Congressional Correspondent, CNN
Manu Raju is a senior congressional correspondent at CNN, covering Capitol Hill and campaign politics. Raju is a veteran reporter in Washington, having previously served as a top Capitol Hill correspondent at Politico for seven years. Prior to his time at Politico, Raju reported for The Hill newspaper, Congressional Quarterly and Inside Washington Publishers. He has long been a frequent guest on political talk shows on TV and radio.
Raju has won multiple journalism awards for his reporting on the major battles consuming Washington and his coverage of campaign politics. In 2012, Raju was part of a team of four reporters who won the White House Correspondents Association's prestigious Merriman Smith award for presidential reporting under deadline pressure for their coverage of the debt ceiling crisis. In 2015, Raju also was awarded first prize by the Society of Professional Journalists in D.C. for beat coverage of the 2014 midterm elections, and a Folio: Eddie Award for a feature profile on Senator Elizabeth Warren. In 2017, Raju won the Joan Shorenstein Barone award, given annually for best congressional reporting by the Radio and Television Correspondent Association.
Raju has developed a reputation as a reporter who can find out what politicians are privately discussing out of the public's view. And he is well known for his sharp and skillful questioning of politicians, a skill he showcased in 2014 when he moderated debates in two of the biggest races in the country -- for a key Senate seat in Colorado and a hotly contested governor's race there as well.
Raju got his start in media working at the student newspaper The Badger Herald at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his alma mater. And his writing roots extend to his late grandfather, Gopalakrishna Adiga, a legendary poet from South India who wrote in the language of Kannada. Raju is a long-suffering Chicago sports fan and a native of the Greater Chicago area.
 
Host
Michael Zeldin
Michael Zeldin is a well-known and highly-regarded TV and radio analyst/commentator.