I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the To the Contrary podcast. The war in Iran continues, although you wouldn't notice it because the president seems to want to talk about pretty much everything else. Cash Patel may actually be on the way out the door. And I don't think his performance on Saturday night is particularly going to be enhancing his standing with the White House. And speaking of Saturday night, we continue to have the fallout from the White House

correspondence dinner that didn't happen, that ended in chaos and tragedy.

It could have been worse, but it gave Donald Trump an excuse to talk about his favorite subject,

building a new ballroom.

Thank you. excuse to talk about his favorite subject, building a new ballroom. And joining us to start off the week is our good friend Ann Applebaum from the Atlantic.

First of all, thanks for coming on the podcast again, Anne.

Thank you for having me.

It seems unavoidable that we have to talk about what happened on Saturday night at the White

House correspondence dinner. Now, I think a lot of people thought that it was going to be kind

of a farce, this sort of, you know, media, political maga canoodling. It didn't actually happen.

We had the gunman. But let's talk about this and the fallout

from it. I want to get your take on the way Trump reacted and didn't react to what may or may not

have been an assassination attempt on him. Your thoughts? I agree with your original point. It was

very striking that he immediately started talking not about his

enemies on the left, which is what some around him did and what he would have done six months or a year

ago, but he immediately started talking about the ballroom and needing to build the ballroom,

which was peculiar on a number of build the ballroom, which was peculiar

on a number of grounds. Number one, this was the White House correspondence dinner. It would never

be held in the White House. It's hosted by the journalists, not by the president. And historically,

it's the journalists inviting the president. And actually, I'll say a word for it. I've been to it a

couple of times. And there is a,

there is a nice theory behind it that it's, you know, it shows that there's a mutual respect for

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