‘Felt like a hostage situation’: Journalists react to Trump’s attacks on press in WHCD speech

[0:00] We begin today with round two of the White House Correspondents' Dinner 2026 [0:04] after May's dinner was cut short by that shooting. [0:07] Trump, who has routinely attacked the press, [0:10] didn't miss the opportunity to take personal jabs and criticize media coverage of him. [0:15] This place is really the largest group of Trump derangement syndrome people [0:24] ever put together at one time, I suspect. [0:29] This evening, it's really all about the fake news media. [0:32] And you're handling of prizes, writing and producing and performing made-up stories like the Academy Awards. [0:39] Sometimes I don't feel you treat me fair. Maybe you do. I don't know. [0:43] I don't feel that. But sometimes you treat me very fairly. [0:46] And I have a lot of respect for your profession. [0:49] They said, would you do it next year? I said, I will be back next year. [0:52] Now, if you get really, really nasty, maybe not. I don't know. [0:55] But we're going to be back next year. [0:57] Yes, that was the president of the United States with the Trump 2028 hat [1:03] at the White House Correspondents didn't last night. [1:05] He ended his remarks with a so-called joke about seeking a fourth term, fourth term. [1:10] So let me be present twice as president. [1:14] This is somewhat of a scoop. [1:17] My intention to run for a fourth term as president of the United States. [1:24] I will be doing that. I will be having an official. [1:28] In fact, I think I have. Yeah. [1:32] I won. I won three times. [1:34] Now I'm going to do it again. Thank you. [1:41] The president's speech comes amid efforts from his administration to threaten press freedoms. [1:47] It's been happening for 18 months. [1:49] One day ahead of his remarks, a federal judge placed pressure on Trump's DOJ, [1:53] causing the department to drop subpoenas it issued to New York Times journalists [1:57] who reported on security concerns about the new Air Force One used, [2:02] as our friend John the Cape, our likes to remind us, [2:03] that was gifted to Trump by the Qatari royal family. [2:07] Joining us at the table now is Aidan McLaughlin, [2:09] Vanity Fair Washington correspondent and MSNOW senior White House reporter Vaughn Hilliard, [2:14] who was in the room last night. [2:16] Vaughn, as the person who was in the room. [2:19] Thank you both for coming. [2:20] Thank you both for coming. [2:22] But, Vaughn, as someone who was in the room, [2:24] like I watched it on television with Jen as we were doing special coverage last night, [2:30] and what I took from it was someone who didn't know his audience, right? [2:35] I took from it, usually speeches are 10 to 20 minutes. [2:39] I think Biden's longest speech was 20 minutes when he was president. [2:42] This was an hour long. [2:44] It was largely a rally speech at the end of the day, right? [2:47] He kept going in and out, as he does at rallies. [2:51] It was also disturbing in a lot of places. [2:53] But the president of the United States made jokes, quote-unquote, [2:56] about seeking a fourth term, which implies that he won in 2020, spreading his election lies. [3:02] And I'm curious how the things that I saw here watching it, [3:06] how that played in the room full of journalists who cover this man. [3:08] They were crass. [3:09] They were offensive jokes. [3:11] And there was an uncomfortability in that room. [3:13] It was a much smaller ballroom than the initial Washington Hilton ballroom, [3:17] maybe a fifth of the size. [3:18] And I think it's important to note, you can hear in the audio some clapping and laughing. [3:24] I mean, lucky if 10 percent of the room was laughing or clapping for him at any given time. [3:30] And that's because, essentially, the entire cabinet was there. [3:33] You had other Trump officials in there. [3:34] You had Trump-aligned media in there. [3:36] As for the actual journalists, those that cover the White House, those that cover Washington, [3:40] there was just dead silence as he made mean, cruel jokes about our friend and colleague over at CNN, [3:46] Caitlin Collins, made a crack at Josh Doffsey, our friend over at the Wall Street Journal, [3:51] and effectively mocked CBS News and the good journalists that exist inside of that newsroom [3:57] by continually repeating CBS's David Ellison, his buddy and the owner of Paramount, [4:04] that is the corporate head of CBS. [4:08] Making that clear how he expects the leaders of news organizations to behave. [4:11] It was an acknowledgment that he's picking up the phone and calling the head of the corporation. [4:16] There is supposed to be editorial independence. [4:18] And inside of there, instead of celebrating what the founders put inside the Constitution as a right, [4:24] not a privilege, as a right, in order to hold those officials that are running our government, [4:30] whether it be at the federal level or the state level or the local level, accountable, [4:34] he was in there, in that room, effectively mocking, degrading them at the same time that he and his administration [4:41] and his legal allies have filed numerous millions and billions of dollars of lawsuits [4:46] and gone and effectively sought even subpoenas of journalists and their family members. [4:50] I do think the speech was a very illuminating window into his psyche [4:56] and all of the characters that live rent-free in there. [5:00] Right. [5:00] He also recycled a lot of his normal rally political attacks against the usual suspects, [5:08] which I don't know if that was actually written by the speechwriter into that speech [5:11] or if he went off teleprompter. [5:14] But, Aidan, let's listen to some of these attacks he lodged, [5:18] not just against journalists, but his political foes. [5:25] He turned Palestinian. [5:27] This was a man who was 100% for Israel. [5:33] 100%. [5:34] Chuck Schirmer, crying Chuck. [5:35] But now he's a proud, very proud Palestinian. [5:38] It's becoming such a horrible and dangerous location that Ilan Omar, [5:44] she's also a very dishonest person and sure to get the hell out of our country. [5:48] She shouldn't be here. She shouldn't be in our country. [5:51] Gavin Newsom recently did a career threatening, [5:55] one of the worst interviews I've ever seen, [5:57] where he said that he can't read a speech. [6:01] He's incapable of reading a speech. [6:03] He's a low IQ person. [6:06] In Maine, they nominated a guy with a Nazi tattoo. [6:10] But don't worry, Democrats. [6:12] Word is that Platt and his replacement, [6:14] he throws bottles at women. [6:17] This guy throws bottles. [6:18] This guy's another lunatic. [6:21] Aidan, what do we know about the speech? [6:25] Anything about how it came together? [6:29] And, I mean, was this just, again, [6:33] another Trump campaign rally at the end of the day? [6:35] Well, I think we know that Trump himself [6:37] didn't seem to be very happy with the speech. [6:39] I mean, at multiple points, [6:39] he interrupted himself to ask who wrote it [6:42] and why no one in the crowd was getting his jokes. [6:46] Because they were bad. [6:47] Read the room. [6:49] There were some delivery issues, though, I will say. [6:52] In defense of the speech writer, [6:52] he would stop repeatedly to riff in the middle of jokes, [6:56] and then he'd deliver the punchline, [6:57] and you have no idea what the setup was. [6:58] There could have been a... [6:59] The one funny and appropriate joke [7:01] that I'm not going to repeat on television right now [7:03] was making fun of the age of lawmakers, [7:06] and the delivery was completely botched. [7:08] Yeah, and the same thing with he had a joke [7:10] about Barry Weiss and the leadership in Iran, [7:14] which was kind of a funny joke, [7:15] but it got completely lost in his delivery. [7:18] So I do feel bad for the speech writer [7:21] who would have to suffer that. [7:22] But in a lot of ways, it felt like a hostage situation. [7:26] There was, like, all these reporters [7:27] who are trapped in Washington in the middle of the summer [7:30] being lured into Trump's old hotel by the president [7:34] so they could sit for an hour [7:36] and listen to him deliver a campaign rally [7:38] and roast them. [7:39] I mean, like, that's what I was thinking the entire time. [7:42] Like, this was, like, a grand trick [7:44] that Trump had pulled off on the press. [7:46] And at least I was happy to see [7:48] that the Correspondents Association [7:50] put together that video, [7:51] which tried to impress upon Trump [7:53] the importance of a free press. [7:55] I don't know if that's going to hold, [7:56] at least beyond last night, [7:58] but it was good to see that. [8:00] So, Vaughn, you mentioned in your prior set of remarks [8:04] about these subpoenas that the president [8:06] or the DOJ has issued to The New York Times [8:10] about their coverage of Air Force One. [8:11] That's what I want to talk about. [8:13] What strikes me about these subpoenas is the timeline. [8:17] If you go back and look at the, [8:18] when these stories were published, [8:21] they were published on July 8th and 9th of, [8:25] yeah, just a few weeks ago. [8:26] But the subpoena seeks information [8:30] going back to January of this year. [8:32] This doesn't feel like a narrow leak investigation, [8:36] at least not to me. [8:37] I want to play what the president said [8:39] when he was asked about this just yesterday. [8:42] Do you support these type of subpoenas to journalists? [8:49] Or are you going to encourage the administration? [8:52] We're not after journalists. [8:54] We're after leakers. [8:55] We're after people that are cowards, [8:58] people that are unpatriotic, [9:00] people that are treasonous in many cases. [9:03] And the way you find them is through the journalists. [9:05] So you think it's appropriate to subpoena [9:07] family members of journalists to find out information? [9:10] I don't know what's appropriate, what's not. [9:14] What's your reaction to that? [9:16] You would know this from the DOJ [9:18] that the New York Times subpoenas [9:20] are the only subpoenas that we know about at this time. [9:22] Right. [9:22] And when you're going back to records dating back to January, [9:25] you're talking about a trove of information, [9:27] of records that this administration could seek [9:31] to effectively try to prosecute journalists [9:35] for the sources that they talk to. [9:39] Individuals inside of the government [9:40] that felt compelled to go to journalists [9:43] to have their stories shared [9:46] and information be revealed [9:47] because they believe that it's in the public interest [9:50] to have it revealed. [9:51] That is how journalism has long worked. [9:53] And in 1971, the Supreme Court affirmed [9:55] with the Pentagon Papers and the publishing [9:57] of the Washington Post and the New York Times [9:58] that unless the government is able to show [10:02] that there is a reparable danger [10:04] caused to the country in public interest, [10:06] that the government effectively can't go [10:09] and stop the publication of material. [10:11] And so what we are watching here in the year of 2026 [10:14] is an administration that has actively begun, [10:17] forget the lawsuits, but the subpoenas, [10:20] effectively gone to not just put fear and intimidation [10:23] inside of news organizations, [10:26] but also, importantly, officials, career employees, [10:30] folks working within the government [10:32] that, with their jobs on the line, [10:35] if they were to be revealed, [10:37] went and found journalists to share information. [10:40] And what this administration is effectively saying to them [10:42] is, do not do that. [10:45] We are the ones that are going to be controlling [10:46] the workflow of information. [10:48] And when you have an admin that, frankly, [10:49] cannot be trusted to share... [10:52] Tell the truth. [10:52] ...and be transparent and tell the truth, [10:54] that's a very difficult reality. [10:56] And at the end of the day, [10:58] this isn't about, like, the navel-gazing of journalists, right? [11:02] That, like, oh, we're so above everyone, [11:04] so we should be able to, you know, write whatever we want. [11:06] It's about the people. [11:07] It's about the American people. [11:08] We are the only folks, people who talk to these sources [11:12] who are trying to gather information. [11:13] It's the only way they know what's going on [11:15] in their government. [11:16] Right. [11:16] And so it's not about Donald Trump trying to... [11:18] It is about Donald Trump trying to silence journalists, [11:20] trying to silence folks within the government [11:22] who are looking at things that they're uncomfortable with [11:25] or have a problem with. [11:26] But it's also because they're trying to keep information [11:27] from you guys at home. [11:29] To chill is gathering. [11:30] That is largely what is happening, [11:31] is make sure that the American people [11:32] don't hear what's going on. [11:34] Let's throw up E6, Karen. [11:35] Like, there's so many of the media targets [11:37] that Donald Trump has been going after [11:40] over and over and over again [11:42] over the last 18 months. [11:43] And Aiden, for me, and, you know, [11:47] I said this last night, [11:48] I think you can joke about anything. [11:51] But the jokes are only funny [11:53] if Donald Trump didn't kick off the Associated Press [11:55] out of the press pool last year. [11:57] Right. [11:58] The jokes are funny [11:59] if Donald Trump's DOJ [12:00] didn't go knock on Tyler Pager's door [12:03] and give him a subpoena [12:04] for just reporting the facts [12:06] when he got in a war last night. [12:08] The jokes would be funny [12:09] if these attacks on journalists [12:12] weren't actually leading to actual pollution. [12:14] Right. [12:14] And I think, you know, [12:15] presidents have always had problems [12:17] with the press. [12:18] You know, every administration [12:19] has had its troubles with reporters. [12:21] They've had concerns about information [12:23] they don't want leaked to reporters [12:25] getting out to the public. [12:27] This is entirely different. [12:28] And the ways in which Donald Trump [12:30] and his administration [12:31] are cracking down on the press [12:32] are totally unprecedented. [12:33] I think a great example [12:34] is what's happening [12:35] at the Pentagon right now. [12:37] Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth [12:38] was in the audience last night. [12:40] He there is a war going on in Iran. [12:43] The U.S. is engaged in a war in Iran. [12:44] And we haven't had a press briefing, [12:46] a major press briefing since May. [12:47] May 5th. [12:48] Yeah. [12:48] That is extraordinary. [12:50] And on top of that, [12:51] when he first took over at the Pentagon, [12:53] he basically purged [12:54] all real reporters from covering it. [12:58] And so it's pervasive [12:59] throughout this administration [13:00] that you have officials [13:02] and cabinet members [13:03] who don't understand [13:03] the value of the free press [13:05] and actually go beyond that [13:06] to punish information [13:08] getting out to the American people. [13:10] And I do want to circle back [13:12] to when we come back [13:13] during the break, [13:15] the conversation about the Pentagon, [13:17] because there's more alarming news there.