Wolffe was born to an English father and a Moroccan mother in
Birmingham, England, where he attended the fee-paying independent school,
King Edward's School, Birmingham. He is
Jewish. He is a 1992 graduate of
Oxford University, achieving
first-class honours, in English and
French literature. He took the Westminster Press diploma in journalism, starting with the pre-entry course at Hastings in autumn 1992 while a trainee reporter with the Brighton
Argus, and moved to the
Financial Times and thereafter
Newsweek. Wolffe covered the entire length of
Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign for
Newsweek magazine, travelling with the candidate and his inner circle from his announcement through election day, 21 months later. He is a political analyst on
MSNBC, having appeared frequently on
Countdown with Keith Olbermann and
Hardball with Chris Matthews. On
NBC, he was featured as a political commentator on
Meet The Press and
TODAY. He features prominently in the forthcoming
HBO documentary on the Obama campaign, and played a leading role in the HBO documentary of the 2000 Bush campaign,
Journeys with George. He has also appeared on
CNN and
Fox News, as well as international media including British, Canadian and Australian television. As
Newsweek's senior White House correspondent, his cover stories included "What He Believes" (on Obama's faith), "Black & White" (about Obama and racial politics), "Bush in the Bubble" (after
Hurricane Katrina), and "Weight of the World" (how Bush handled the
Lebanon War). Wolffe joined Newsweek in November 2002 as diplomatic correspondent, covering foreign policy and international affairs. In the 2004 presidential election, he covered the
Howard Dean campaign before switching to
John Kerry. Before
Newsweek, Wolffe was a senior journalist at the
Financial Times, serving as its deputy bureau chief and US diplomatic correspondent in Washington. He reported on US foreign policy, covered the
Microsoft antitrust trial, as well as regulatory and business issues at the
US Department of the Treasury, the
Federal Trade Commission and the
Securities and Exchange Commission. In April 2009, he joined Public Strategies, Inc. — a corporate-strategies firm run by
Dan Bartlett, former director of White House communications under
George W. Bush — as senior strategist. In July 2009, Wolffe guest-hosted a few episodes of
Countdown with Keith Olbermann and came under fire from liberal bloggers and writers because of that position. "Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program — or serving as an almost daily 'political analyst' — is exactly tantamount to MSNBC's just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist", wrote
Salon columnist
Glenn Greenwald. Wolffe continues to be a regular guest on numerous
MSNBC shows, including
Hardball with Chris Matthews. In October 2012, it was announced that Wolffe would serve as VP and executive editor of MSNBC.com, scheduled to launch in early 2013. He also lectures at many universities and institutes. In September 2009, Wolffe lectured on the topic
Who is Barack Obama at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at
Saint Anselm College. On the edition of 29 January 2013 of ''
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell'', Wolffe mentioned that he had recently become a naturalised US citizen, although he did not give a specific date. ==Other work==