McKay Coppins

McKay Coppins
Born	2/2/1987
Birthplace	Massachusetts, United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	Journalist, author
Employer	The Atlantic
Known for	Political and religious reporting, The Wilderness, Romney: A Reckoning
Education	Brigham Young University (BA)

McKay Coppins (born February 2, 1987) is an American journalist, author, and staff writer for The Atlantic, known for his reporting on American politics and religion. Coppins first gained national attention as a young political reporter at BuzzFeed, where his coverage of Donald Trump and the Republican Party established him as a notable voice in political journalism. He is the author of The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party's Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House (2015) and Romney: A Reckoning (2023), a biography of United States Senator Mitt Romney written with Romney's extensive cooperation. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Coppins has also written about the intersection of faith and modern life. As of 2026, he continues to produce long-form investigative journalism for The Atlantic, including a widely discussed cover story on America's sports-betting epidemic.

Early Life

McKay Coppins was born on February 2, 1987, in Massachusetts. He was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a faith that has remained central to his identity and has informed portions of his journalistic work throughout his career. Details about his parents and upbringing in Massachusetts are not extensively documented in public sources.

Education

Coppins attended Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he studied journalism. His time at BYU provided both academic training and a grounding in the Latter-day Saint community that would later become a recurring subject in his writing. After completing his undergraduate degree, Coppins pursued a career in political media.

Career

BuzzFeed

Coppins began his career in digital media and rose to prominence as a political reporter and editor at BuzzFeed. By 2012, while still in his mid-twenties, he was serving as the politics editor at BuzzFeed, a role that brought him early recognition. Forbes named him to a list of notable young media figures, identifying him as the 25-year-old politics editor of BuzzFeed. Details magazine also profiled him as part of a feature on the next wave of political pundits in October 2012.

Coppins's most consequential early work at BuzzFeed was his reporting on Donald Trump. In early 2014, Coppins published a detailed article titled "36 Hours on the Fake Campaign Trail with Donald Trump," in which he spent time with Trump as the businessman flirted with a potential presidential campaign. The piece portrayed Trump's political aspirations with skepticism, describing what Coppins characterized as a disorganized and performative exploration of a candidacy.

The article provoked a strong reaction from Trump, who publicly attacked Coppins on social media and in interviews, calling him "true garbage with no credibility." The confrontation between Trump and Coppins also drew the attention of Breitbart News, which took Trump's side in the dispute, an episode that illustrated the emerging fault lines in conservative media that would become more pronounced during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Coppins later reflected on his early reporting on Trump in a 2019 BuzzFeed News article titled "How the Haters Made Trump," in which he examined how Trump's antagonistic relationship with the media — including his own confrontation with Trump — may have inadvertently fueled Trump's rise to political power.

The Wilderness

In 2015, Coppins published his first book, The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party's Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House. The book examined the state of the Republican Party following Barack Obama's reelection in 2012, profiling various factions and figures within the party as they competed to define its future direction. Coppins drew on his extensive reporting at BuzzFeed to provide an insider's account of the intraparty conflicts, ideological debates, and personality clashes that characterized the GOP during this period.

The book received attention from major publications. Foreign Affairs published a capsule review of The Wilderness, noting its account of the Republican Party's internal struggles. The book's timing — published before the 2016 presidential primaries — gave it particular relevance as the Republican field took shape and Trump's candidacy, which Coppins had covered closely, transformed the race in ways that many political observers had not anticipated.

The Atlantic

Coppins joined The Atlantic as a staff writer, where he has focused on long-form reporting on politics, religion, and American culture. The move to The Atlantic marked a transition from the fast-paced digital journalism of BuzzFeed to more in-depth narrative and investigative work.

At The Atlantic, Coppins has continued his reporting on the Republican Party and conservative politics while also expanding his range of subjects. He has written about the experience of being a Latter-day Saint millennial, exploring how younger members of the faith navigate questions of doubt, identity, and community in the digital age.

Romney: A Reckoning

In 2023, Coppins published his second book, Romney: A Reckoning, a biography of Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential nominee and United States Senator from Utah. The book was written with Romney's extensive cooperation, including access to the senator's personal emails and private reflections on his career and the state of the Republican Party.

The book provided a detailed portrait of Romney's political life, from his campaigns for governor and president through his tenure in the Senate, where he was one of the few Republican senators to vote for the impeachment of Donald Trump. Romney: A Reckoning explored the senator's internal deliberations, his relationships with other Republican leaders, and his growing alienation from the party he had once led as its standard-bearer. The book generated significant media coverage and contributed to Romney's decision to announce that he would not seek reelection to the Senate. Coppins's access to Romney's candid assessments of his colleagues and the direction of Republican politics made the book a notable entry in the genre of political biography.

Reporting on Sports Betting

In 2026, Coppins published a cover story for The Atlantic's April issue titled "Sucker," reporting from inside the American sports-betting industry. For the piece, Coppins spent a year immersed in the world of online sports gambling, wagering $10,000 of his own money provided by The Atlantic to document the mechanics, psychology, and social consequences of the country's sports-betting boom.

The article described Coppins's personal experience with the addictive qualities of sports-betting apps, including a scene in which he excused himself from the family dinner table to place bets on his phone. Coppins used the term "the casino-ification of America" to describe the broader cultural phenomenon in which gambling had expanded beyond sports into politics, award shows, and even international conflicts.

The story received substantial media attention. Coppins appeared on multiple outlets to discuss the piece, including NPR, where he described how he "went bust" during the reporting process, and MSNBC, where he discussed the rise of gambling in American culture. He was also interviewed on WNYC and featured on The Ringer's Plain English with Derek Thompson podcast, where the conversation explored how gambling had infiltrated culture, politics, and even geopolitics.

Personal Life

McKay Coppins is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has written publicly about his faith, including a personal essay at BuzzFeed in which he explored how exposure to critical and historical information about the church on the internet affected his relationship with his religion. In the essay, Coppins described the challenges of maintaining faith in the digital age while affirming his continued commitment to the Latter-day Saint community.

Coppins has referenced his family life in his journalism, including in his 2026 Atlantic cover story, in which he described the tension between his immersive reporting on sports betting and his responsibilities as a parent. He resides with his family, though detailed information about his spouse and children beyond these passing references has not been extensively documented in public sources.

Recognition

Coppins was identified early in his career as a rising figure in political media. Forbes featured him in a profile highlighting his role as politics editor at BuzzFeed at the age of 25. Details magazine included him in a feature on the next generation of political pundits in 2012.

His first book, The Wilderness, was reviewed by Foreign Affairs and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications, and established Coppins as a chronicler of the internal dynamics of the Republican Party. His second book, Romney: A Reckoning, received significant attention for its unprecedented access to a sitting senator's private communications and candid reflections, and was covered by outlets including Axios.

At The Atlantic, Coppins has produced work that has drawn national attention, including his 2026 cover story on sports betting, which was discussed across multiple major media platforms including NPR, MSNBC, WNYC, and The Ringer.

His reporting on Donald Trump during the 2014 period at BuzzFeed is considered an early and notable example of sustained journalistic scrutiny of Trump's political ambitions before his formal entry into the 2016 presidential race.

Legacy

McKay Coppins's career has spanned a period of significant transformation in both American politics and the media industry. His trajectory from BuzzFeed's digital-first newsroom to The Atlantic's long-form journalism represents a broader pattern among journalists of his generation who began their careers in the era of viral media and later moved toward more traditional narrative and investigative formats.

His early reporting on Donald Trump's political ambitions — and the fierce backlash it provoked from Trump and allied media outlets — presaged dynamics that would come to define American political media in the years that followed. The confrontation between Coppins and Trump in 2014, and the alignment of Breitbart News against Coppins during that episode, offered an early illustration of the combative relationship between Trump and the press that became a central feature of the 2016 campaign and subsequent presidency.

Through The Wilderness and Romney: A Reckoning, Coppins has documented the internal struggles of the Republican Party across two critical periods in its modern history — the post-2012 search for direction and the post-Trump reckoning that prompted figures like Mitt Romney to reassess their party and their careers. His access to Romney's private communications for the 2023 book provided a rare window into the private deliberations of a prominent political figure during a turbulent era.

Coppins has also contributed to public discourse about religion and identity, writing as an openly practicing Latter-day Saint journalist at a time when questions about the role of faith in public life remain subjects of ongoing debate. His 2026 reporting on the American sports-betting industry demonstrated his continued ability to move beyond politics into broader questions about American culture and its evolving relationship with risk, technology, and consumer behavior.