Jeff has been assigned to cover the Joe Biden presidency, making this his 4th consecutive presidency. He has been able to attend some ground-breaking and historical events in this position. Among them the 2018 North Korea–United States Singapore Summit meeting between North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump.
Zeleny is proud of his Nebraska roots, being raised on a farm near Exeter. He believes that background, and the people he has worked with in Nebraska, helped him in his career. He often wears an Exeter cap - but people have asked him if he attended the Exeter Prep School in New Hampshire. When asked how he ended up in Washington he said "I drove east".
He had the latest popular vote numbers for the 2020 Presidential election.
The transition time for the presidency always provides opportunities and challenges. He said that, politics aside, COVID is a monumental problem right now. He pointed out that the number of people who died from COVID yesterday (December 3) was more than the number of people lost in the 911 attacks. So, every day that we have a high death rate it is like having 911 every day.
If you are interested in viewing any of Jeff's writing, visit https://www.cnn.com/profiles/jeff-zeleny-profile.
BIO:
Jeff Zeleny serves as CNN's senior Washington correspondent, covering the overall 2020 campaign. Most recently he served as the network's Senior White House Correspondent covering the Trump administration with a focus on President Trump's pivotal role in the 2018 midterm election campaign for all of the network's programs and platforms. This is the third consecutive presidency Zeleny has covered, traveling across the country and around the world with George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Zeleny covered the 2016 campaign, his fifth presidential election, from the early days of the Democratic and Republican primaries through the general election contest with Trump and Hillary Clinton.
In 2015, Zeleny joined CNN from ABC News where he was their senior Washington correspondent. He reported extensively on the Obama administration and the Republican Party as it gained control of the U.S. Senate in the 2014 midterm elections.
Prior to ABC News, Zeleny was the national political correspondent for The New York Times. He covered the 2012 presidential election and Obama's 2008 campaign to the White House. Zeleny also covered the first two years of the Obama administration as a White House correspondent, and previously covered Congress for the Times.
Before The New York Times, Zeleny was the national political correspondent for the Chicago Tribune where he covered the 2004 presidential campaign and the first term of the Bush administration. He joined the Tribune in 2000 as a reporter on the Metropolitan desk in Chicago, where he was a member of the reporting team that won a Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism for documenting gridlock in the nation's air traffic system.
Zeleny, a graduate of the University of Nebraska, began his journalism career at the Des Moines Register and is a native of Exeter, Nebraska.