George Stephanopoulos | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Stephanopoulos in 2024 | |
| Senior Advisor to the President | |
| In office June 7, 1993 – December 10, 1996 | |
| President | Bill Clinton |
| Preceded by | Rahm Emanuel |
| Succeeded by | Sidney Blumenthal |
| White House Communications Director | |
| In office January 20, 1993 – June 7, 1993 | |
| President | Bill Clinton |
| Preceded by | Margaret D. Tutwiler |
| Succeeded by | Mark Gearan |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1961-02-10)February 10, 1961 (age 64) |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | Columbia University (BA) Balliol College, Oxford (MA) |
George Robert Stephanopoulos (born February 10, 1961) is an Americantelevision host, political commentator, and formerDemocratic advisor.[1][2] Stephanopoulos currently is acoanchor withRobin Roberts andMichael Strahan onGood Morning America, and host ofThis Week,ABC's Sunday morning current events news program.[3][4]
Before his career as a journalist, Stephanopoulos was an advisor to the Democratic Party. He rose to early prominence as acommunications director for the1992 presidential campaign ofBill Clinton and subsequently becameWhite House communications director. He was later senior advisor for policy and strategy, before departing in December 1996.[5]
George Stephanopoulos was born inFall River, Massachusetts, the son of Robert George Stephanopoulos and Nickolitsa "Nikki" Gloria (née Chafos). His parents were ofGreek descent.[6] His father was aGreek Orthodox priest anddean emeritus of theArchdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity inNew York City.[7] His mother was the director of theGreek Orthodox Archdiocese of America National News Service for many years.[7]
Following some time inPurchase, New York, Stephanopoulos moved to the eastern suburbs ofCleveland, Ohio, where he graduated in 1978 fromOrange High School inPepper Pike.[8]
In 1982, Stephanopoulos received a Bachelor of Arts degree (summa cum laude) with a major inpolitical science fromColumbia University inNew York, and was thesalutatorian of his class.[9] While at Columbia, he was elected toPhi Beta Kappa his junior year and was awarded aHarry S. Truman Scholarship.[10] He was also a sports broadcaster for 89.9WKCR-FM, the university'sradio station.[11] As a student, he lived inCarman Hall andEast Campus.[12]
Stephanopoulos attendedBalliol College at theUniversity of Oxford in England, as aRhodes Scholar, earning aMaster of Arts in Theology in 1984.[13]
Stephanopoulos worked inWashington, D.C. as an aide toEd Feighan of Ohio, a Democraticcongressman. His job included drafting letters, memos, and speeches. His salary was reportedly $14,500 a year.[14] He later became Feighan's chief of staff.[13][15]
In 1988, Stephanopoulos worked on theU.S. presidential campaign ofMichael Dukakis.[16] He noted that one of his attractions to the campaign was that Dukakis was aGreek-American liberal from Massachusetts.[17] After the campaign, Stephanopoulos became an executive floor assistant toDick Gephardt,U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader; he held this position until he joined the Clinton campaign.[18]
Stephanopoulos was, withDavid Wilhelm andJames Carville, a leading member ofClinton's 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. His role on the campaign is portrayed in thedocumentary filmThe War Room (1993).[19]
In the Clinton administration, Stephanopoulos served as a senior advisor for policy and strategy. His initiatives focused on crime legislation, affirmative action, and health care.[18] His salary was reportedly $125,000 per year.[20] At the outset of Clinton's presidency, Stephanopoulos also served as thede factopress secretary, briefing the press even thoughDee Dee Myers was officially theWhite House Press Secretary.[21] Stephanopoulos was regarded as a member of Bill Clinton's inner circle.[22][23]
In 1994, afterPaula Jones accusedBill Clinton ofsexual harassment, Stephanopoulos andJames Carville sought to discredit her allegations against Clinton. Both men suggested that Jones was just seeking cash for her story.[24] Stephanopoulos also successfully sought to keep Jones' news conference off television. Stephanopoulos calledNBC journalistTim Russert,CNN chairmanTom Johnson, as well as several others, whom he convinced to keep her conference off television.[25]
On February 25, 1994, Stephanopoulos andHarold Ickes had a conference call withRoger Altman to discuss theResolution Trust Corporation's choice ofRepublican lawyer Jay Stephens to head theMadison Guaranty investigation as well as discussing if Stephens could be removed. The Madison Guaranty investigation would later turn into theWhitewater controversy.[26][27]
In 1995, as he pulled out of a parking space in front of a restaurant in theGeorgetown neighborhood ofWashington, D.C., his car collided with a parked vehicle.[28] Stephanopoulos was arrested and charged withleaving the scene of an accident and driving with an expired license and license plates. White House press secretary,Mike McCurry, said that President Clinton told Stephanopoulos "not to worry about" the accident but to get his license renewed.[29] The charge of leaving the scene of an accident was subsequently dropped.[29][30][31]
In 1999 Stephanopoulos andJames Carville were sued for defamation byGennifer Flowers.[32][33] Stephanopoulos had made comments about her allegations that she had an affair withBill Clinton. He accused Flowers of doctoring her taped conversation with Clinton to make her story look credible. Stephanopoulos also called her story "tabloid trash", "garbage", and "crap". The suit was dismissed since his comments were not the basis for defamation.[34][33]
Stephanopoulos resigned from the Clinton administration shortly afterClinton was re-elected in 1996.[35] Stephanopoulos is credited as among the first inside the White House to recognize the damage the Lewinsky affair could cause to the Clinton presidency.[36]
Hismemoir,All Too Human: A Political Education (1999), was published after he left the White House during Clinton's second term. It quickly became a number-one bestseller onThe New York Times Best Seller list forfive weeks. In the book, Stephanopoulos spoke of hisdepression and how his face broke out intohives due to the pressures of conveying the Clinton White House message. Clinton, referencing the book in his autobiography,My Life, expressed regret for the excessive pressure he placed on the young staffer.[37]
Stephanopoulos's book covers his time with Clinton from the day he met him in September 1991, to the day Stephanopoulos left the White House in December 1996, through two presidential campaigns and four years in the White House. Stephanopoulos describes Clinton in the book as a "complicated man responding to the pressures and pleasures of public life in ways I found both awesome and appalling".[38][39]
After leaving theWhite House at the end of Clinton's first term, Stephanopoulos became a political analyst forABC News, and served as a correspondent onThis Week,ABC's Sunday morning public affairs program;World News Tonight, the evening news broadcast;Good Morning America, the morning news program; along with other various special broadcasts.
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In September 2002, Stephanopoulos became host ofThis Week, and ABC News officially named him "Chief Washington Correspondent" in December 2005.[40] The program's title added the new host's name.
When named to the position, Stephanopoulos was a relative newcomer to the show, usurping longtime panelists and short-term co-hostsSam Donaldson andCokie Roberts who, for a few years, briefly replaced the longtime original host,David Brinkley.
ABC News executives reportedly offeredTed Koppel, formerNightline anchor, theThis Week host job in 2005 after the program's ratings had become a regular third-, fourth-, and sometimes fifth-place finish after competitors NBC, CBS, Fox, and syndicated programs.[41] However,This Week beatMeet the Press on January 11, 2009, when Stephanopoulos interviewed president-electBarack Obama.[42]
On April 16, 2008, Stephanopoulos co-moderated, withCharles Gibson, the twenty-first, and ultimately final,Democratic Party presidential debate between Illinois Senator Barack Obama and New York SenatorHillary Clinton for the2008 election cycle. While the debate received record ratings, the co-moderators were heavily criticized for focusing most of the first hour of the debate on controversies that occurred during the campaign rather than issues such as the economy and theIraq War. Stephanopoulos acknowledged the legitimacy of the concerns over the order of the questions,[43] but said they were issues in the campaign that had not been covered in previous debates.[44]
During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Stephanopoulos launched a blogGeorge's Bottom Line on the ABC News website.[45] Stephanopoulos blogged about political news and analysis from Washington.[46]
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In December 2009, ABC News president David Westin offered StephanopoulosDiane Sawyer's job onGood Morning America after Sawyer was named anchor ofWorld News. Stephanopoulos accepted the new position and began co-anchoringGMA on December 14, 2009. Stephanopoulos announced on January 10, 2010, that that would be his last broadcast as the permanent host ofThis Week. However, after his successor,Christiane Amanpour, left the show amid sagging ratings, it was announced that Stephanopoulos would return as host ofThis Week in December 2011. He signed a deal to stay with ABC until 2021 worth$105 million.[47]
On January 7, 2012, Stephanopoulos was the co-moderator of a debate amongMitt Romney,Ron Paul andRick Santorum. During the debate, Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Romney whether the former Massachusetts governor believes the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn a 1965 ruling that a constitutional right to privacy bars states from banning contraception. During the debate, Romney said it was a preposterous question.[48]
Following Diane Sawyer's departure fromWorld News at the end of August 2014, Stephanopoulos was the Chief Anchor at ABC News from 2014 to 2020 while retaining his roles onGMA andThis Week. Stephanopoulos leads a new documentary unit for Disney's digital platforms and hosts four primetime hour-long specials on the ABC network annually.[49]
In 2009, Stephanopoulos spoke at the annual Tri-C Presidential Scholarship Luncheon held at theRenaissance Cleveland Hotel and praisedCuyahoga Community College.[8]
George Stephanopoulos is the co-founder of production companies BedBy8[50] and George Stephanopoulos Productions.[51] These companies producedPretty Baby: Brooke Shields,Grand Knighthawk: Infiltrating the KKK,Power Trip: Those Who Seek Power and Those Who Chase Them, andOut of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier.
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In 1994, columnistJack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos signed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned byHugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". ANationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made."[52]
Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal."[53]
However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual". A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity". The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the CurrencyEugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attendedYale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmenHenry B. Gonzalez andJohn Dingell.[54]
Stephanopoulos donated $25,000 in 2012, 2013, and 2014, a total of $75,000, to theClinton Foundation, but did not disclose the donations to ABC News, his employer, or to his viewers.[55] Stephanopoulos failed to reveal the donations even on April 26, 2015, while interviewingPeter Schweizer, the author ofClinton Cash, a book which alleges that donations to the Foundation influenced some ofHillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State.[55] After exposure of the donations byPolitico on May 14, 2015, Stephanopoulos apologized and admitted he should have disclosed the donations to ABC News and its viewers.[55][56] The story was broken byThe Washington Free Beacon, which had questioned ABC News regarding the matter.[57] The donations had been reported by the Clinton Foundation, which Stephanopoulos had considered sufficient, a reliance ABC News characterized as "an honest mistake".[56]
Based on Stephanopoulos's donations to The Clinton Foundation charity and his behavior during prior interviews and presidential debates, Republican party leaders and candidates expressed their distrust, and called for him to be banned from moderating 2016 Presidential debates, due to bias andconflict of interest.[57][58] He agreed to drop out as a moderator of the scheduledFebruary 2016 Republican presidential primary debate.[59]
In the month prior to the revelation of his donations, Stephanopoulos toldJon Stewart onThe Daily Show that when money is given to the Clinton Foundation, "everybody" knows there's "a hope that that's going to lead to something, and that's what you have to be careful of."[59]
In 2010, Stephanopoulos attended a dinner party at the home of convicted sex offender socialiteJeffrey Epstein alongsideChelsea Handler,Woody Allen,Katie Couric,Prince Andrew,Charlie Rose, andEva Andersson-Dubin.[60][61] Following Epstein's arrest in July 2019, the guest list of the party was reported online, with those attending receiving backlash, Stephanopoulos denied being friends with Epstein, with the party being the only encounter.[62]
Stephanopoulos toldThe New York Times: "That dinner was the first and last time I've seen him, I should have done more due diligence. It was a mistake to go."[63]
On March 19, 2024,Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit in Florida against ABC News and Stephanopoulos for an undisclosed sum over a March 10 airing ofThis Week, arguing that Stephanopoulos harmed Trump's reputation by claiming he was found liable for raping the writerE. Jean Carroll.[64][65][66] The judge presiding over the case stated that the jury did find that Trump forcibly penetrated Carroll with his fingers.[67] In July 2024, JudgeCecilia Altonaga, presiding over the suit brought by Trump, denied a motion to dismiss by Stephanopoulos, finding that the technical definition used by the judge in the New York case did not examine the findings made by the jury, which was "sexual abuse", not "rape".[68] On December 14, 2024 George Stephanopoulos and ABC News settled the lawsuit, paying $15 million toDonald Trump's presidential library as a charitable contribution, $1 million for Trump's legal fees, and issuing a public apology to Trump for Stephanopoulos repeatedly making false statements about Trump during the interview on March 10.[69][70][71]
In the fourth episode of thefirst season of theNBC television seriesFriends, entitled "The One with George Stephanopoulos" and originally aired 13 October 1994, the girls spy on Stephanopoulos across the street, after they were delivered his pizza by accident.[72][73]
Stephanopoulos was the inspiration for the character of Henry Burton inJoe Klein's novelPrimary Colors (1996). Burton was subsequently portrayed byAdrian Lester in the1998 film adaptation.Michael J. Fox's character, Lewis Rothschild, in the filmThe American President (1995), written byAaron Sorkin was modeled after Stephanopoulos. He was also used by Sorkin as the model forRob Lowe's character,Sam Seaborn, on the television drama seriesThe West Wing.[74] According to Stephanopoulos, his role in the Clinton administration was more likeBradley Whitford's characterJosh Lyman than Seaborn or Rothschild.[75]
In 2000, he rivaledJohn F. Kennedy Jr. as the nineties' most eligible non-Hollywood bachelor, appearing (along with George Clooney) in aPeople magazine's "Most Wanted" list.[76]
Stephanopoulos appeared in thePawn Stars episode "Buy the Book", where he bought a first edition of Ernest Hemingway'sFor Whom the Bell Tolls for $675.[77]
Stephanopoulos returned to hisalma mater, Columbia University, in 2003, serving as the keynote speaker at Columbia College's Class Day.[78] In 2013, Stephanopoulos played himself inHouse of Cards[79] and in 2014 he played himself "Shadows", an episode ofAgents of S.H.I.E.L.D.[80] In September 2016, Stephanopoulos was featured on a €1 (1 euro) Greek postage stamp, along with other notableGreek-Americans.[81]
In 2021, Stephanopoulos was portrayed by George H. Xanthis in two episodes ofImpeachment: American Crime Story; the third season of thetrue-crime anthology television seriesAmerican Crime Story onFX.[82]
In July 2022,Loot's episode 4 of season 1 was released, in which main character Molly Novak said, "sometimes I turn on the news and pretend George Stephanopoulos is my husband."[83]
Stephanopoulos is aGreek Orthodox Christian and has earned a master's degree intheology.[84]
In 2001, Stephanopoulos married actress, comedian, and writer,Ali Wentworth,[85] at theArchdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on New York'sUpper East Side. They have two daughters, one born in 2002 and one born in 2005.[86][87] Stephanopoulos was introduced totranscendental meditation byJerry Seinfeld. Conducting an interview onGood Morning America, he said, "We're all here because we all have something in common—we all practice Transcendental Meditation. … I think that people don't really understand exactly what it is and what a difference it has made in people's lives."[88]
In May 2007, Stephanopoulos received anHonorary Doctor of Laws fromSt. John's University inNew York City.[89]
He has won two, and been nominated for 17, News and Documentary Emmy Awards.
In 2012, 2013 and 2014, Stephanopoulos made $25,000 donations to the 501 nonprofit founded by former President Bill Clinton, the foundation's records show. Stephanopoulos never disclosed this information to viewers, even when interviewing author Peter Schweizer last month about his book "Clinton Cash," which alleges that donations to the foundation may have influenced some of Hillary Clinton's actions as secretary of state.
His gifts to the foundation of at least $50,000 were first reported Thursday morning by Politico.
But his disclosure of the contributions — made after the conservative Washington Free Beacon started asking ABC News questions — seemed only to deepen Republicans' distrust in the most recognizable political journalist at the most-watched news network in the country.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, said that the donations and Mr. Stephanopoulos's close ties with the Clintons should preclude him from moderating any debates in the 2016 presidential campaign.
On "The Daily Show" last month, Stephanopoulos said that when foreign governments and other entities give millions to the Clinton foundation, "everybody" knows there's "a hope that that's going to lead to something, and that's what you have to be careful of."
George Stephanopoulos '82, ABC newsman and former advisor to President Clinton, was the keynote speaker at Class Day. He offered the graduates words of advice from his father: "Keep your balance", and from legendary faculty member Lionel Trilling '25: "Prize fearlessness more than happiness."
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | White House Communications Director 1993 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Senior Advisor to the President 1993–1996 Served alongside:Rahm Emanuel | Succeeded by |
| Media offices | ||
| Preceded by | Anchor ofThis Week 2002–2010 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Co-Anchor ofGood Morning America 2009–present Served alongside:Robin Roberts | Incumbent |
| Preceded by | Anchor ofThis Week 2012–present | |
| Preceded by | Guest host ofJeopardy! July 12–16, 2021 | Succeeded by |
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| International | |
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| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
