McKay Coppins

McKay Coppins (born February 2, 1987) is an American journalist, author, and staff writer for The Atlantic.

Career
Coppins began his career at Newsweek and broke the story that Jon Huntsman Jr., would resign his ambassadorship in China and run for President.

Coppins joined BuzzFeed to cover the 2012 presidential race, becoming an important source on Governor Mitt Romney's Latter-day Saint (Mormon) faith. In 2012, Coppins was one of the "30 under 30" media pundits in Forbes magazine and also listed along with three other young BuzzFeed News journalists as one of Politico's "ten breakout reporters of 2012." He is a regular contributor to CNN and MSNBC.

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential primaries, Coppins became embroiled in a public Twitter feud with Republican candidate Donald Trump after writing articles suggesting that Trump was running a "fake" campaign. In November 2016, he announced he was leaving BuzzFeed to join The Atlantic as a staff writer.

In 2015, Coppins published The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party's Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House. Walter Russell Mead favorably reviewed the book in Foreign Affairs, writing that it was "[w]idely sourced and compellingly written." He has an acrimonious relationship with President Donald Trump after he called his presidential aspirations a "sham"; Trump in response called him a "dishonest slob".

Coppins released a biography of Mitt Romney called Romney: A Reckoning on October 24, 2023. The book covers 25 years of American politics, based on 30 interviews with Romney and thousands of private emails, text messages, and diary entries.

Personal life
Coppins was raised in Holliston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Brigham Young University where he was editor of BYU's student newspaper, The Daily Universe.

Coppins is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), in which he served a full-time mission, and he has often written about his faith. Coppins felt his background in the church helped him while writing about Mitt Romney, a fellow Latter Day Saint, as it helped Coppins "in understanding the elusive candidate as an actual person". Coppins and his wife were married in 2009 and have four children.