Welcome to Scoop, where you get the scoop on this week's news. My name is Jenna, and this is

Smarter News.

Hi, everybody. We're just going to leap right in today with the biggest story coming out of the weekend,

with what is being described as a shooting incident that took place in

Washington, D.C. at the Washington Hilton Hotel during an annual event. And that annual event

brings the press and our leadership and the major power brokers and celebrities really

of the country together in one place, which is why this event, which would have gotten a lot of

attention otherwise, got even more attention. And our guest was actually there. Mary Catherine Ham is

joining us. She's an author, commentator, a journalist. She just a little bit of everything.

Mother of four kids, I like to mention that part too, because I don't want to forget that part,

gives her a really good perspective and a sense of humor. She's also the host of two incredible podcasts getting hammered

and normally with Carol Markowitz, which I just listened to this weekend, Mary Catherine,

which gave a description and insight into what took place because you were actually at the

Washington Hilton Hotel on Saturday night when this incident happened. And I think there is some confusion a little bit about how it played out. So why don't you just give us a big picture, you know, overview of what it's like to go to this event? Yeah. So I don't go to this event every year. I appreciate the invite. I got from Real Clear Politics this year. And I go about like once every eight to ten years, I would say. And a lot of people are ambivalent about

this event because it is like this very cozy intersection of a bunch of high level politicians

and press and corporate sponsors and celebrities. And quite frankly, it can read very a little go gauche and a little too much to the rest of the

country. It's like, oh, is the press really worth celebrating at this level? And sometimes I'm like,

fair, understand. So there's a little bit of like, has been a little bit of back and forth about

how appropriate is this dinner. And then during the Obama years, it was very lavish and everybody was happy to get together. During the Trump years, Trump didn't want to go to it because he doesn't want to be in that room. And this was the first year he was coming back to this room. And so that was interesting. I was pretty impressed that they got him to say yes to this. So he's going to come.

And the word on the street, by the way, before we sat down from a well-placed source,

was that he was going to speak for an hour and 20 minutes.

He was not messing around.

...