One of the most fun things about being a journalist is that you get paid to be curious. And, in the case of Fortune’s journalists, curiosity can open doors to some rarefied places. It’s our job to get inside the rooms where business happens. We meet the smartest and most powerful people—the ones who are building the future we will all live in—and digest what we learn for readers.
In mid-May, I sat in the room that’s the center of American economic power, the Oval Office, and spoke with President Donald Trump, hours before he boarded a plane to China with an entourage of Fortune 500 CEOs for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The president and I talked business for an hour, discussing his feelings about the Supreme Court ruling striking down his tariffs (“It really pisses me off”); the prospect of new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh cutting interest rates at a time of high inflation (“You can’t really look at the figures until the war is over”); dealmaking with Iran; the story behind the government’s unprecedented stake in Intel; and more.
It’s our job as journalists to get inside the rooms where the smartest and most powerful people are building the future. In this issue, one of those rooms is the Oval Office.
