Good Friday, good friends, and welcome to this week's

Reporter's Roundtable on the Bill Press pod.

Now, we promise to finish early today so you can get out to the mall and grab a good seat

for tomorrow's $45 million Trump birthday parade, or if you're on the West Coast,

you can watch the U.S. Marines parading in the streets of Los Angeles.

But warning, don't protest the birthday parade in Washington, or the president says you will be

met with heavy force.

And please don't ask a question about what ICE is up to, or you might get the Alex Padilla

treatment.

And then, as if that was not enough to worry about, Israel has launched preemptive strikes

against Iran at the very time that President Trump claimed he was close to making a new nuclear deal

with Iran. And of course, Iran has responded with drone attacks against Israel. Whoa, such a crazy

week. But here to make some sense of it all, today's panel, a say about Alan Smith, political

reporter for NBC News. Hi, Alan. How's it going, Bill?

Good to have you with us. Thank you, Arthur Delaney, political reporter for Huff Post. Hi, Arthur.

Great to be with you. Thank you, sir. And John Bennett, White House correspondent for CQ roll call,

who was on pool duty yesterday for the big White House

picnic, congressional picnic. Hello, John. Hello, Bill. Thanks for having me. And so, John,

I'll stay with you because at the end of the picnic, you reported, you've got the news about

Israel's strike against Iran. You asked the White House for

its comments, and you were the first to report on the White House reaction. I guess the sense was

that I had from your report, this is the last thing the White House wanted to hear or see, right?

...