“The American electoral campaign remains without equivalent in the world” according to Jérôme Cartillier, former correspondent at the White House.

Jérôme Cartillier (masked, left) aboard Air Force One. J.C.

Jérôme Cartillier? former AFP correspondent in Washington covered the terms of Obama, Trump and Biden. In a comic strip, he recounts his experience.

You have known three presidents in the White House: three administrations, three completely different ways of operating?

I spent seven years at the White House as an AFP correspondent: the last two years of Obama, the four years of Trump, and the first year of Biden. It's a very intense position for all the journalists who are in this bubble of the White House, by the way. Particularly on Trump where everything was chaotic, in substance as well as in form.

He shook up the codes?

The relationships between journalists and the White House are very structured. There are daily press briefings, unmissable meetings in the Oval Office, presidential trips, etc. Trump blew all that apart. Because he wanted to communicate by himself, especially with Twitter.

They were endless days, which started early in the morning if he had decided to tweet early in the morning. And they ended late in the evening, if he had decided to tweet late in the evening. There was a kind of disorganization, a cacophony. What was striking, as we hear in the comic strip, is that he said a lot of bad things about journalists but he loved being in contact with them.

Whereas Barack Obama, for his part, favored communication that was regulated to the millimeter ?

Yes, very controlled. Trump, for example, systematically stopped when he left the White House to take his helicopter. Obama never did.

With Trump, we had an impromptu press conference every two or three days. It was valuable access to the president for journalists. But he was the one who set the themes and the tempo! He liked the organized cacophony. It didn't encourage in-depth discussions, it encouraged the Trump show.

With Joe Biden, yet another style?

Yes, we were a bit between the other two in terms of access. He liked the exchange with journalists. He liked rehashing anecdotes about his past, memories of Delaware, etc. If I saw him tired ? Yes, I only saw him at the beginning of his term, when he was clearly less tired than he is now.

But he didn't give the image of someone coming to power with the same energy as Obama, obviously, but also as Donald Trump.

What is your view of the current campaign ? It's out of the ordinary in your opinion ?

Yes, even if these election campaigns always are. There is such intensity, it goes so fast, with absolutely enormous media attention. So these campaigns are, I think, without equivalent in the world. But here, yes, we have indeed had a series of absolutely spectacular twists and turns.

From the attack on Trump that propels him into the arch-favorite, to the withdrawal of Joe Biden and the arrival of Kamala Harris. So, yes, this American presidential campaign is unique in its kind.

Do you find American society truly fractured ?

Yes, absolutely. And Trump has accentuated this phenomenon. His entire policy, his way of campaigning, is precisely to fracture. Cutting America in two is part of his political strategy.

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