Manu Raju Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography » StarsUnfolded

Some Lesser Known Facts About Manu Raju

• Manu Raju was born and raised in Darien, Illinois, United States, to Indian immigrant parents.

• During his studies in the field of business administration, he started working as a sports editor in an American newspaper, the Badger Herald.

• In 2002, he started working as an anchor on the assignment desk at a TV station, Wisconsin Madison Television (WMTV) in Madison, Wisconsin.

• Later, he moved to Washington DC, where he started working with Inside Washington Publishers, covering news on the environment.

• From 2009 to 2015, Manu Raju was working with various newspapers, including Congressional Quarterly, The Hill, and Politico.

• Overtime Manu Raju had earned a reputation for discovering what politicians are talking about behind the scenes. He also broke some of the biggest news stories of the 2013 government shutdown and the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s tough reelection campaign in 2014.
  

  Manu Raju, while reporting from the street

• In 2012, Raju was part of a team of four journalists that won the prestigious Merriman Smith Memorial Award given by the White House Correspondents Association, which honored the work of journalists in the coverage of the debt crisis in 2011.

• In January 2015, the magazine Washington Life recognized Manu as one of the “movers and shakers” in the Washington, D.C. area under the age of 40.

• In September 2015, Manu joined the Cable News Network (CNN), an American multinational news media company.

• In 2015, the Society of Professional Journalists in Washington, D.C., honored Raju with the first prize for his coverage of the 2014 midterm elections.

• In the same year, Raju won the Folio Eddie Award for his feature profile, which he co-authored on Senator Elizabeth Warren. He was also introduced to the Hall of Fame for his high school, Hinsdale South.

• In 2016, Raju became the CNN lead correspondent for the presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio.

• In 2017, while working for CNN, Raju broke the news that the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign had accessed hacked documents provided by WikiLeaks, a non-profit media organization that publishes news leaks and documents submitted by sources while remaining anonymous. The news was later found to be false, and the story was retracted. After this incident, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted at Manu Raju and said:

I won’t hold my breath for an apology, or for you to call out your puppet masters on the left that fed you BS knowing you would gleefully run with it without ever checking the other side”

• However, CNN announced that it will not take any action against Manu Raju, as he had followed CNN’s editorial standards process in reporting.

• In January 2017, Raju broke a big news story that sparked ethical and legal issues regarding President Donald Trump’s then-Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee, Tom Price. The Trump administration asked CNN to retract the news; however, the fact-checkers concluded that the news was actually true.

• In 2017, he was awarded the 2016 Joan Shorenstein Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based coverage of Congress and national politics.

• In 2021, during the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Raju was broadcasting inside the Capitol building.

• In 2021, Manu was promoted to CNN’s chief congressional correspondent, where he covered the United States Congress and campaign politics.

• Since August 2023, Manu has been anchoring CNN’s Sunday edition of the show Inside Politics Sunday, while maintaining his role on Capitol Hill.
  

  A still of Manu Raju from his show Inside Politics Sunday

• In March 2026, Manu Raju came into headline after a heated exchange with Marco Rubio, 72nd United States Secretary of State, during a press briefing on the US-Israel war with Iran. During the briefing, Raju questioned Rubio’s explanation of why the United States joined the military action of Israel against Iran.

RAJU: Your quote is, ‘We knew there was going to be an Israeli action. We know that would precipitate an attack–’

MARCO RUBIO: The– you asked– I was asked a very specific question, so you guys can misrepresent but I was asked a very specific question yesterday. The bottom… pic.twitter.com/2sPoX4H0oj

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 3, 2026