Everything to Know About Meet the Press' Kristen Welker

NBC’s Kristen Welker took over Meet the Press last fall, and Sunday morning political journalism hasn’t been the same since.Sachin & Babi dress, sachinandbabi.com; Dolce & Gabbana heels, dolcegabbana.com; Adeler Jewelers 18K yellow gold, diamond and mint tourmaline pendant, and 18K rose gold, diamond and custom cleaved Rose of France earrings, adelerjewelers.com.

Watch Kristen Welker interview Lindsey Graham, a guest on Meet the Press (@meetthepress) in early March. They discuss the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. Welker is poised and gracious when welcoming the senior South Carolina senator to the show. She smiles, and it feels anything but superficial. Her arms, cast to each side of her notes, are open and welcoming.

Graham quickly commits to what he does best, towing the party line, saying President Biden’s Middle East policy is misguided. Welker checks her notes. Her body language, complemented by eye contact, changes. It isn’t combative. It’s nuanced and regarded. She leans forward like someone in a scrum at a DC cocktail party who knows what she’s hearing isn’t quite right but wants to understand. Welker reads from her notes and fact-checks Graham on the fly. Nabbed, the senator pivots and launches another volley.

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And on it goes. This isn’t an anomaly. And it isn’t partisan. Welker, a Harvard grad, quickly points out that her goal as a journalist, whether interviewing Republicans or Democrats, is to build trust with viewers and welcome all sides of the great American political and social conversation.

After all, we are a chattering nation, and the consensus is that Welker is among the best right now at leading the dialogue—especially on Meet the Press, where she’s the first Black host in the show’s 76-year history. She’s also the first woman to host the show since Martha Rountree co-created and hosted the program in 1947. Over the years, hosts for the Sunday morning staple have represented a who’s who of journalism, including Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw and frequent fill-in host Andrea Mitchell, one of Welker’s mentors.

“I wouldn’t be here if it were not for Andrea,” Welker says. “During my early days in Washington, she taught me how to improve my writing and work sources. One of her best pieces of advice was always to keep pushing until you get an answer, even if it’s uncomfortable. You’ve seen that play out in Andrea’s career, where she has pressed world leaders who didn’t necessarily like the questions she asked and, in some cases, tried to have her physically removed from the room. She kept asking her questions. And so I have her words in my head every Sunday.”

Welker also credits the late Gwen Ifill with offering early career advice. Out of the blue, Ifill called the young journalist new to DC and invited her to dinner. “She simply said, ‘I know it’s hard when you get to Washington—just keep going and focus on the work.’”

Which is what Welker does best. Her White House coverage began in 2011 and spans three administrations (Obama, Trump, Biden). She’s also the 2023 recipient of the National Press Club’s top prize, the Fourth Estate Award. Welker received one of the Radio Television Digital News Association’s First Amendment Awards in March. Since taking over the Meet the Press host’s chair last fall, the journalist’s guests have included Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Special counsel Jack Smith’s legal filings cited her interview with Donald Trump.

Politics was part of the Welker family DNA in her Philadelphia hometown, where she says community news discussions happened frequently. When her mother ran for Philadelphia city council twice, Welker, who was in her early teens, says it allowed her to see the media’s role in politics.

“That’s where my passion for journalism started,” Welker says. “I watched how journalists covered her campaign. Some of them were thorough and respectful. They fostered a constructive conversation.” But one radio host, Welker notes with dismay, asked her mother about being in an interracial marriage.

“Look, she probably was asking a question that some voters had inquired about,” Welker sighs. “But it was an early indication to me of the importance of journalism—and of good journalism— to make sure that you’re asking tough questions [but] doing it in a respectful way that helps the audience further their understanding of our politics.”

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Welker says Philadelphia is at the core of who she is and how she views the world. “Growing up in Philadelphia gives us this Rocky spirit, which means that I often approach things as an underdog, someone who’s got to fight my way to the top and is passionate about what I’m doing. And that’s what I bring to journalism.”

Growing up in a city where the Constitution’s framers hashed out the precepts of democracy isn’t lost on Welker. “I think that underscores how I view my active role in upholding our democracy and holding our elected officials to account for their words and actions,” she says.

Fourth Estate goosebumps, indeed. But it’s not a recent phenomenon for Welker. I ask her if there’s a story she worked on during the early stages of her career that she still thinks about today. She mentions reporting a city council brown-bag lunch debate in Redding, Calif., as a 25-year-old reporter for a local ABC network affiliate. She was a one-woman crew, charged with reporting the story and recording herself with a camera. She lugged everything, including the camera’s heavy batteries and tripod, herself.

The city council debate in Redding? Whether the town should build a swimming pool. It was mundane yet had an outsize community impact.

“City council members showed up to have lunch with community members and hear the debates play out in real-time,” Welker says. “This is the core of what politics is. It’s a community discussion about how you want to spend your taxpayer dollars and what type of community you want to build for your children. It’s a story that I have great pride in because it was my introduction to political journalism.”

One factor that doesn’t escape any journalist’s view these days is that America doesn’t seem to agree on objective facts any longer. We bicker over the sky being blue. The days of big three networks, led by an avuncular Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings doling out the unimpeachable facts that we all agreed were real and true, are gone. For now, at least.

“We’re in an extraordinary moment in our political history, and I think that it adds to the challenge of being a journalist,” Welker says. “Certainly, it means we must be armed and ready with facts and fact-checks if necessary. Sometimes, it means we have to make judgments in real time about how long we listen to someone’s speech. Do we need to cut out and do some fact-checking and rejoin the interview?”

Does that add to her responsibility at Meet the Press? “Because the country is so divided right now, I need to ensure we’re hearing from diverse voices. We’re trusting our audiences to know that if we bring them diverse voices and do our due diligence as journalists, they will make the best possible decisions for themselves as families, communities and voters when they enter the voting booths. And I think that’s critical to what we do. We can’t stop trusting our viewers.”

We’ve all seen the Hollywood tropes about dogged journalists surviving on coffee and lousy food as they unearth nuggets for a story. Welker no longer occupies that role, but I wonder if anything keeps her up at night.

She admits worrying about getting her interviews right. “I’m constantly reading and researching, and I’m constantly asking myself, ‘What am I missing?’ When I sit down to do interviews on Sundays, I want to make sure that I’m asking every relevant question in a respectful but tough way. I want to make sure that I’m prepared with a set of follow-ups. I want to make sure I have Andrea Mitchell’s words in my head: Am I getting an answer to my question for the American public? That’s what keeps me up at night.”

Margot, her toddler, also might play a role in Welker’s late nights. She tells me her daughter, besides adoring soccer, recently graduated to a big-girl bed—a monumental move for any parent. I ask if becoming a parent for the first time changed her worldview. She nods.

“What’s important is creating a better world for Margot and all of the Margots in our world,” Welker says. “I want her to be healthy and happy. Every child deserves that. And it helps me to think about [national and world] issues on that level—by making sure that I’m asking questions on behalf of families sitting around the dinner table. I’m asking tough questions about what they need and want for their children and their communities to leave them in a better place. So, [Margot] really focuses me in that way. She makes me so optimistic and happy about the future. Because, frankly, Margo is a force of nature.”

Just like her mom.