PERSON: David Corn

D.C. Editor

David Corn is a veteran Washington journalist and political commentator. He is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine and an analyst for MSNBC and NBC News. He won the 2012 George Polk award and a National Magazine award for breaking the 47 percent video story that influenced the Obama-Romney presidential contest. For 20 years, he was the Washington editor of The Nation magazine.

Corn writes on a host of subjects, including politics, the White House, Congress and national security. He has broken stories on Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, George H.W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, Colin Powell, Rush Limbaugh, Enron, the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA leak case, corruption in Iraq, the National Rifle Association, the Pentagon and assorted Washington players and institutions.

Corn has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Boston Globe, Newsday, Harper’s, The New Republic, The Atlantic, The Washington Monthly, LA Weekly, the Village Voice, The Independent, Elle, Slate, Salon and other publications and websites. He has blogged for AOL’s “Politics Daily,” The Huffington Post, CQ Roll Call, and The Guardian. For years he wrote the online column “Capital Games” for The Nation.

He is the author of three New York Times best-sellers—Showdown: The Inside Story of How Barack Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor, and the Tea Party; Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (with Michael Isikoff); and The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception—as well as the e-book 47 Percent: Uncovering the Romney Video that Rocked the 2012 Election. His novel, Deep Background, was hailed as one of the best novels of the year by Los Angeles Times. Corn is also the author of the biography Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA’s Crusades.

He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University. Corn has spoken, lectured or debated at many colleges and events, including Harvard, Brown, Cornell, Notre Dame, Yale, Amherst, University of Southern California, American University, University of Vermont, Arkansas State University, the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Boulder and the Chicago Humanities Festival.

— apbspeakers.com