Hanna Trudo, a former senior political correspondent for The Hill, is weighing a run for Congress in New Hampshire’s first Congressional district.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at the work of a reporter who is considering a run for Congress as a Democrat, and cover more media misses.
Hanna Trudo, a former senior political correspondent for The Hill, is weighing a run for Congress in New Hampshire’s first congressional district as a “a journalist who’s tired of writing the same story about how Democrats keep losing to Republicans and failing us.”
“I haven’t poll tested my pitch,” Trudo wrote in a memo obtained by NBC News. “I’m simply writing with the same fire I’ve spit for the past decade: Democrats must be better.”
“Under Donald Trump’s off-brand of authoritarian politics, we are no longer free. Our First Amendment freedoms are being cruelly ripped away by Trump, Elon Musk and other obscenely rich, unelected tech lackeys who have contempt for us,” writes Trudo, who covered Democrats for five election cycles as a reporter.
“As a 4th generation Granite Stater, I take our state motto in N.H., Live Free or Die, seriously,” she wrote in a post on X. “Under Donald Trump, we are no longer free. Dems need to stop chasing the magical land of bipartisanship. We need to fight NOW.”
Trudo worked at The Hill for nearly four years. Before that, she was a politics reporter at the Daily Beast where she covered the 2020 presidential election. She also previously worked for National Journal and Politico.
Trudo’s reporting in recent years lines up neatly with her new campaign rallying cry. She may have a new job title, but her message hasn’t changed: Democrats aren’t confronting Trump aggressively enough.
“Democrats are starting to push for a stronger response to President Trump as his policies fuel anger with the party’s base,” she reported early in the current Trump administration.
“Members of the party believe Trump has enjoyed a honeymoon period during his first month in office as Democrats have so far failed to coalesce around a unified countermessage — but at least some of them want that to change,” she reported.
And while she now makes her disdain for Trump and Musk crystal clear, she didn’t do much to disguise her partisanship back when she was covering the administration as an ostensibly neutral reporter.
She previously described Musk in her reporting as “the president’s wealthy and influential ally who has significantly disrupted the daily functioning of the federal government.” The description is accurate enough, but should be accompanied in a down-the-middle news article by some information about the ballooning size of the federal government, the epidemic of waste, fraud, and abuse, and the popular support for cutting the size of the federal workforce, none of which was mentioned in Trudo’s piece.
Shortly before Election Day, she reported on a speech Trump gave in California where he used what she called “fear-mongering language to condemn the ‘vicious and bloodthirsty criminals’ and ‘savage gangs’ he alleged were overtaking California.”
Meanwhile, like many other reporters, Trudo offered lackluster reporting on Biden’s mental acuity.
Amid concerns about President Biden’s mental fitness, Trudo focused instead on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying he had “failed to gain noticeable traction in the wake of President Biden’s catastrophic debate fallout against former President Trump.”
She also co-bylined an article that focused on the “mystery” of Biden’s exercise routine, which mentions how Biden had at one time been attached to his Peloton bike but then “little is known about the president’s workout routine and how he stays active.”
And in the early days of the second Trump administration, Trudo wrote a fawning article about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez embracing her role as “attack dog against Trump.”
Trudo also reported frequently on Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and, in hindsight, she seems like a fan.
“While Republicans and Democrats both posture towards what’s popular, Sanders has often stood alone in the working class arena, sidestepping pressure to conform to a centrist model that favors a college educated electorate and upper middle class,” she wrote in March, shortly before leaving her position at The Hill.
In fact, she tweeted on April 7 that, “In 2025, it is undeniable that Bernie Sanders is the current leader of the Democratic Party.”
Trudo has taken to social media in recent weeks to express support for Democratic leaders who are showing openness to a new generation of Democratic officials.
“Thank you Sens Shaheen, [Gary] Peters, [Dick] Durbin & [Tina] Smith for creating room for a new generation of leaders before the midterms.”
“Dems have a chance to elect leaders who now represent the working class that has been left behind for decades,” she added. “New blood matters alongside a working class agenda.”
Headline Fail of the Week
Cross necklaces are “A Hot Accessory, at the Intersection of Faith and Culture,” according to the New York Times.
“Seen on influencers, pop stars and White House staff, cross necklaces are popping up everywhere,” the Times reports.
The article offers this helpful description of the cross for those who may be unfamiliar:
The cross, a symbol most associated with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, first emerged during the Roman Empire when it was an instrument of mass torture, said Robert Covolo, a theologian and associate pastor at Christ Church Sierra Madre near Los Angeles.
Media Misses
The piece paints a portrait of a broken man, a shadow of his former self, plagued by depression and demented episodes. None of that was especially apparent to Terris’s sources in the immediate aftermath of Fetterman’s 2022 stroke, a period when only his political opponents acknowledged the extent of the senator’s injuries. Rather, it seems that his impairment only became impossible for the left to ignore after Fetterman made himself into a stalwart Israel supporter.