See Chris and Jen instantly react to the White House Correspondents' Dinner

[0:00] Now I'd like to bring to my colleague Jen Psaki, hosted a briefing with Jen Psaki and former press [0:04] secretary to President Joe Biden. You kind of know this dynamic from both sides. You're someone [0:11] who has been on sort of both sides of what can be a fraught dynamic is always sort of weird and [0:16] complicated and I think psychologically strange, you know, like what is that relationship? And [0:24] it's adversarial, but you're human beings, you're spending time together. The things that Michael [0:27] is saying we're true, it's sort of natural. And yet we're in a completely different world now and [0:33] there's something strange about the juxtaposition of how different the world is and the room looking [0:38] the same way, if I can say that, right? That's kind of odd about this moment. [0:43] No question about it. I mean, I will say not to make it less sexy than people make it seem, [0:48] but most of the time the source in the room is like the staff director for the budget committee [0:54] who's sitting next to a reporter, an economics reporter from the Washington Post, and they're [0:58] talking about the budget negotiations and that informs the reporting. That's most of the time. [1:03] And the vast majority of reporters in that room most of the time are not people who are easily [1:07] swayed by people just because they had rubber chicken next to each other at a dinner. But yes, [1:11] we're in a very different time right now. And as everybody has outlined through the course of your [1:15] show, I mean, this is a president who has taken on the press, attacked the rights of the freedom of [1:22] press, the right to free speech more than anyone else with every lever of his power. [1:27] And now he's standing in this room and not standing currently. His eyelids are looking a little heavy, [1:32] might I note. But, you know, he's going to be standing in this room and delivering a speech to [1:37] this group of people. The one thing I will say that I have noted, and I'd be interested if you agree or [1:41] not, I mean, is a year and a half ago in the beginning of this administration, it was I mean, [1:47] we could do a story every single day about how the press were acquiescing, how major news [1:51] organizations were acquiescing to the Trump administration from the Barry Weiss era, which [1:57] we're still in, to ABC, to Jimmy Kimmel period of time. I do think we're seeing more pushback from [2:04] news organizations punching back, including The New York Times and others. That's important to see. [2:09] Are there exceptions to that? Is it enough? No. But it is a change in garden. A lot of those people [2:14] are in the room tonight for that, too. I completely agree. I think that's true. I think that's true [2:20] surveying the entire landscape of civic institutions in a free society. Right. So like the law and the [2:28] law firms and the universities and the press. Right. There's all these things. There's like, [2:32] you know, what makes up an open society? There's all these. There's the government. [2:35] There's businesses. Right. And then there's this whole landscape that is all things that aren't [2:41] one of those two things. And that's religious organizations and it's political parties, [2:46] it's community organizations. And yes, I totally agree. I think, you know, the media is one of the [2:51] tentpoles of that. But I think we have seen people get tougher. And honestly, you know, the irony here [2:56] is for all the manipulation and browbeating of the press, for all the attempts to kind of control it [3:01] through regulatory fiat. The guy's pulling at 34 percent this week. So this has not been if the [3:08] if the idea is we will control the press and our buddy Elon Musk owns Twitter and our other buddy is [3:13] going to buy this and that's going to allow us to propagandize the American people who are going to [3:18] love us like that is plainly not working. Right. It's not working. I mean, I also think and you [3:25] talked about the journalists who are going to get awards tonight. And as we watch that, because I've sat [3:29] through through this many of times, people should know that typically what happens is those awards [3:33] are given out. And then everybody on the dais, including the president, shakes the hand and [3:38] congratulates the reporters who get the award. So we can watch for that and see if that happens. [3:43] But Tyler Pager, Tyler Pager, the story, who you probably know. I mean, he's 31, 32 years old. [3:51] He was a well-meaning, good reporter, thorn in my side when I was the White House press secretary [3:58] because of his relentlessness in covering the Biden administration. Now he's getting an award for his [4:03] reporting on the Trump administration. Things like how much the donations of Timothy Mellon to [4:10] K4 troops, right? The behind the scenes story behind the Zelensky Trump meeting. These are things the [4:16] public wants to know about. Right. And he was also a reporter who received a subpoena just two weeks [4:23] ago. And guess what he did today? He reported another story about the Qatari jet. Point is, [4:28] like, I'm not sure a lot of these people are not exactly counting to Trump's efforts here. And we see [4:34] that in evidence, right? Yeah. We've also reached, we should just note, we've reached the eye resting [4:40] portion of the evening. Sometimes, you know, if you're standing for a long time, you get tired, [4:43] you sit down, you rest your legs. Donald Trump's eyelids are like everyone else's legs. If he's, [4:47] if they're open, they start to, they get a little fatigued and he needs to arrest them. Now, I will [4:53] say, I can't imagine something more boring to Donald Trump than people giving speeches about like [4:59] the First Amendment and the power of the press and talking about things other than Donald Trump. [5:04] So we're not surprisingly seeing him, seeing him check out a bit. I do wonder too, like, [5:11] you know, the, the, the, the ownership structure part of this, right, is, is interesting because that [5:16] was the other thing that we saw early on was the, you know, take Disney, for example, right? Disney [5:22] settles that George Stephanopoulos lawsuit, which I think was a bad suit. You know, I don't have eyes [5:27] into the internal deliberations out of it, but I think it was a bad suit. They settled it. I think it [5:32] set a bad mark. It, it, it, and Trump sort of lords it over them, right? And I think Disney was scared [5:38] at some level about reprisal from a government that they need regulatory things from. That, that part of [5:47] it at the highest echelons and levels also seems to be subsiding a little. Like clearly that's still [5:53] in the case with the Time Warner acquisition with Paramount, stuff like that. But again, more fight, [5:59] other parties now getting involved in trying to block that acquisition. Disney, the second time [6:04] around, just kind of like not taking Kimmel off the air and kind of brushing it off. Like there's, [6:09] there is a lot of that even at the highest level. That is true. Even at the highest levels and big [6:14] corporate levels, not all of them, but certainly Disney's a good example. I also think we've seen, [6:21] I mean, Sarah Fitzpatrick's story about Kash Patel from several weeks ago that the Atlantic put out [6:26] that he threatened to sue them, right? Then Jeffrey Goldberg came out with a scathing response [6:31] and Sarah Fitzpatrick did another story about it. So even news organizations that aren't as enormous, [6:38] that don't have the resources of an enormous corporate entity are also like, you know what? [6:43] Bully trying to take my lunch money. I'm not going to give you my lunch money because otherwise [6:47] you're going to come back and ask for my lunch money again. And that's, that's a good sign. [6:53] Josh Dossi, I believe getting an award up there, a great reporter for the Wall Street Journal. [6:57] I do feel duty bound to know it as we talk, how weird it would be if I just went like this while [7:01] you're talking to me. Like it would be strange. People would remark on it. It's, it's become, [7:09] it's become something that just happens all the time. But obviously if anyone else did that, [7:13] or if you were in a meeting or you're in the middle of an interview and someone did that, [7:16] it would be notable. You would remark on it. [7:19] It would be notable, Chris, that we've sat on panels for hours and hours together watching a [7:24] variety of events that could be described as not exactly earth shatteringly exciting at all moments. [7:30] And neither of us have closed our eyes that I recall. But yes, that appears to be what's [7:35] happening right now while we're watching, though clapping aggressively. [7:37] What do you, what do you think about this sort of question about, you know, talk to reporters. [7:44] I think you and I are in a different position. You know, we, we, we're, we're sort of on networks [7:49] and have shows that have sort of our names and our voices and, and, and people are sort of watching [7:52] us. It's like, we were telling you what we think, right? That's the, that's the bargain. [7:56] We have the viewer, right? I'm going to tell you what I actually think. That's, that's not true for [8:00] a ton of people in the press. And many people in the press are, you know, the, the, the, [8:03] the sort of norms around what they're doing is they're not telling what they're thinking. [8:07] They're sort of reporting the facts or letting the story speak for itself. [8:10] And there's a, there's a feeling that Donald Trump wants to kind of go with war, [8:15] to war with the press, to make them the enemy, because he wants to kind of make them seem [8:21] politically toxic to the 40% of the country that sort of, he has a lock on or the 38 or 34%, [8:27] and that the press does itself a disservice if they seem to be playing into going to war with him. [8:32] That's one argument. The argument, the other side is it's kind of crazy when a person's [8:37] going to war against you to sort of pretend like he isn't and to kind of keep conducting [8:42] business as normal. And again, I think there's sort of arguments on both sides. I think there [8:45] are people with good faith and really people I respect who are in different parts of that debate, [8:50] depending on where they're in the landscape. But what do you think about that debate? [8:54] I mean, I think Trump is a dog that doesn't have very many new tricks, right? And so he has long [9:00] thought that if he bullies the press, they're going to acquiesce. And for a period of time, [9:06] a number of organizations did, and in a relatively recently. That has been changing to some degree, [9:13] as we've been talking about. One of the things I think is interesting in terms of how we talked [9:17] about it in the Oval Office today is he kind of suggested, I'm not going, and he said this recently, [9:23] I'm not going after the press. I'm going after the people internally. The press are just a means of [9:28] getting there. And this is also their argument around the lawsuits, right? And sweeping up [9:33] journalists in that. I think that's total BS, but it's almost like he's changing his own spin [9:39] to try to say, because maybe he recognizes he's losing this a bit. [9:43] Well, let's just say, and on this note, no one is more obsessed with the press and kind of loves [9:49] the press in a weird fetishistic way than Donald Trump, who is like, has been a press hound his entire [9:55] life, has been called people up with a fake name, John Barron, to work them, was constantly [9:59] tabloids, like loves reading about himself. Like, no one has a more dysfunctionally obsessive [10:04] fetishistic focus on media press coverage press than the individual on your screen right there. [10:10] Like, this is someone who cares more than anyone ever should care, frankly, about stuff. [10:17] Yes. [10:18] He wants to be loved so much, you know? And I always think, Chris, about when he met with [10:25] Barack Obama in the Oval Office right after he got elected in 2016, and he kept asking him, [10:30] how are you so popular? Not about a lot of other things that you might want to know if you're an [10:36] incoming president, because he wants to be loved. Right? That's it. [10:40] How do the nuclear codes work?