“The irony of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner”

Summary

---

Deadline: White House – "The irony of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner"

Host: Nicolle Wallace, MS NOW
Date: July 27, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode centers on the stark contradictions laid bare at the recent White House Correspondents’ Dinner, particularly in the era of Donald Trump’s second presidency. Host Nicolle Wallace and a panel of seasoned journalists and political analysts reflect on the event’s uneasy alliance between the press and a president openly hostile to the First Amendment. They examine the ethical dilemma for reporters, the normalization of Trump’s attacks on the media, and the broader implications for democracy and government institutions.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Correspondents’ Dinner: Purpose vs. Reality (01:06–06:20)

• Wallace’s Framing: She lays out the irony: a gala meant to honor the First Amendment is attended by journalists alongside a president who actively undermines press freedom.

  "If journalists or their readers or their viewers or their listeners were hoping that this rescheduled White House Correspondents Dinner...would showcase a president ready to concede finally, the vital importance within a democracy of a free press... they would be tragically and sadly mistaken." – Nicolle Wallace (01:54)

• Trump’s Speech: The president delivers a meandering monologue filled with personal attacks, insults, and an “autocratic fantasy” of staying in office for a fourth term.
• Room Reaction: The press is criticized for sitting through the verbal assault, with some applauding despite near-constant denigration.

2. Trump’s Direct Attacks on Journalists (04:12–08:15)

• Wolf Blitzer highlights the risks faced by reporters covering Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, detailing threats and real-world safety concerns (03:38).
• Trump makes misogynistic and demeaning remarks about CNN's Kaitlan Collins, among others, while mocking other political leaders and media figures.

3. Press Responsibility and Structural Dynamics (08:15–17:24)

• Jessica Yellen: Argues the dinner in its current form "has outlived its purpose," suggesting future events exclude the president to prevent participating in a “fiction that serves him and undermines public trust in the press” (08:44).
• Mark Elias: Goes further, saying the dinner should have been cancelled years ago, underscoring how the media’s attendance undermines public trust.

  "My question to the journalists in the room is, why were you there?... It's dinners like that is why you lose the trust of the American public." – Mark Elias (09:54)

• John Heilman: Offers a historical take, noting the event has long symbolized media–power coziness and that the public’s antipathy for “the establishment” isn’t new. He calls for dismantling and rebuilding the ritual to better serve democracy.

  "The dinner, if it ever had a purpose, has long ago outlived that purpose and they need to...tear it down to the studs and then rebuild." – John Heilman (16:33)

4. The Erosion of Democratic Norms and Institutional Trust (17:24–33:43)

• Wallace & Panel: Lay out Trump’s years-long war on the press—kicking out major outlets, relentless “enemies of the people” language, and legal intimidation like the recent $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times.

  "The war on the First Amendment isn't a slogan... It is an actual practical operational plan..." – Nicolle Wallace (19:02)

• Yellen: Emphasizes that Trump’s public abuse is strategic, designed to intimidate reporters into silence and erode the profession’s credibility. She encourages solidarity among journalists as an antidote.

  "The way that news media has been responding to him is not working... It is not actually building trust with audiences." – Jessica Yellen (20:36)

• Mark Elias: Draws a parallel between journalists’ and DOJ lawyers’ moral choices under Trump, critiquing the normalization of participation in corrupted institutions.

5. Case Study: Trump’s Abuse of Prosecutorial Power (24:10–33:43)

• Jim Comey’s Case: Wallace presents the example of former FBI Director Jim Comey, who faces a politically motivated DOJ indictment over a symbolic social media post, highlighting the chilling effect on dissent.

  "Donald Trump has a bottomless desire to gain revenge against those who've criticized him. And I'm not going to stop criticizing him because I think that's required if you care about America." – Jim Comey (24:10)

• Elias & Heilman: Emphasize the judicial and institutional wreckage inflicted by the Trump administration, warning of long-term challenges in restoring trust and functional norms.

6. Voter Suppression and Partisan Manipulation of Election Processes (35:15–41:06)

• Breaking News: Trump’s administration asks the Supreme Court to re-enable an executive order curbing mail-in ballots, with the DOJ actively litigating in multiple states for access to voter data.
• Elias: Outlines the real motive—using data to target, disenfranchise, and intimidate Democratic voters, signaling a shift in suppression tactics from mail-in ballot restrictions to data-driven purges.

  "Why does Donald Trump want all the voting data in the country? ...Because he wants to be able to take that data, lie about what's in it, and then tell the states, if you don't remove these people, then all hell is going to break loose..." – Mark Elias (40:21)

7. Political Consequences and Democratic Messaging (41:06–46:48)

• Panel: Discuss the GOP's electoral weakening and rising panic among Republican candidates forced to distance themselves from Trump.
• Dan Cannon: Advises Democrats to pair populist economic messaging with clear communication about Trump’s self-serving corruption; reinforces the need to focus both on lower costs for voters and on holding Trump accountable for enriching only his own family.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Trump’s taunting claim of press dependence:

  "But you people have no idea how lucky you are. When I'm gone, you're all going to be broke. Your business model is going to be finished..." – Donald Trump (05:27)

• Jessica Yellen's call for change:

  "Participating in this event with him perpetuates a fiction that serves him and actually undermines the public's trust in the press." (08:48)

• Mark Elias on institutional complicity:

  "And my response is, you know, we're in a crisis of democracy, and everyone makes choices." (32:37)

• Heilman’s diagnosis of institutional collapse:

  "The presumption that the federal courts used to give to charities and the DOJ, which is that they were operating in good faith, that that is no longer the case...is so extraordinary." (29:11)

---

Important Timestamps

• 01:06: Wallace’s opening critique of the Dinner and introduction of the episode’s thesis.
• 03:38: Wolf Blitzer describes threats against Epstein reporters.
• 05:27: Trump’s speech excerpt—media dependence and bid for a fourth term.
• 08:44: Jessica Yellen on why the dinner should exclude the president.
• 09:47: Mark Elias challenges journalists’ passive attendance.
• 16:33: John Heilman calls for tearing down and rebuilding the tradition.
• 19:02: Wallace underscores the real threat to the First Amendment.
• 24:10: Clip from Jim Comey about Trump’s prosecutorial vengeance.
• 35:54: Breaking news about Supreme Court appeal on vote by mail.
• 40:21: Mark Elias details the administration’s data-driven voter suppression plan.
• 44:29: Dan Cannon explains how Democrats should pair economic messaging with anti-corruption narrative.

---

Conclusion

This episode delivers a sobering critique of the press–power dynamic in Washington, especially under Trump’s antagonistic presidency. The guests provide insider perspectives on why institutional traditions—like the Correspondents’ Dinner—now feel hollow or harmful, mounting a case for systemic rethinking both within the media and in government agencies. Through their exchanges, the episode articulates the precarious state of U.S. democratic norms and the urgent need for courage and reform among journalists, legal professionals, and political leaders.

---

Transcript

[Narrator/Announcer]

Watch Disclosure Day at home now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg, from a screenplay by David Koepp, starring Emily Blunt, Josh o', Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson and Colman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required. Also in theaters.

[Daniel (Pretty Litter Founder)]

Hi, I'm Daniel, founder of Pretty Litter. Cats and cat owners deserve better than any old fashioned litter. That's why I teamed up with scientists and veterinarians to create Pretty Litter. Its innovative crystal formula has superior odor control and weighs up to 80% less than clay litter. Just one bag lasts up to a month, meaning fewer refills and less scooping. Pretty Litter even monitors health by changing colors to help detect early signs of potential illness. It's the world's smartest kitty litter.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

Go to prettylitter.com and use code Pandora for 20% off your first order.

Hi there, everyone. It's four o' clock in the east, so this is one of the most polarizing conversations within and about the media. But for our part as a team, we thought it was important that we have it. Late Friday evening, a large number of America's most prominent journalists, including some of the finest ones in this very news organization, attended the White House Correspondents Dinner. They did that with a president who the day before was stopped by a federal judge from forcing five New York Times reporters to testify before a federal grand jury about sources and reporting that made him mad. Such is the gravity and the reality of the threat Donald Trump poses right now to the First Amendment and those who are protected by it. If journalists or their readers or their viewers or their listeners were hoping that this rescheduled White House Correspondents Dinner, an event created and intended to celebrate the First Amendment, would showcase a president ready to concede finally, the vital importance within a democracy of a free press or a White House press corps finally willing to draw the line at crude and cruel insults delivered by Donald Trump to their peers in the press, some of them sitting among them, they would be tragically and sadly mistaken. Donald Trump bombed in that his jokes fell completely flat. But he succeeded in forcing the press inside the ballroom to listen to smears against their fellow journalists and jokes about his autocratic fantasy of staying in power beyond his constitutionally permitted two terms. It was a jarring image to witness Washington journalists laughing with the architect of Donald Trump's inhumane child separation policy and deadly mass deportation agenda. It was equally jarring to see others politely clap at the man who threatened the broadcast licenses of NBC and abc. We do not intend with our coverage today to single out any one journalist, but to point to other threatened democracies and issue a warning about the immediate dangers of cozying up to someone who aspires very publicly to take away the right that all journalists have to cover Donald Trump and his administration. Other reporters shook Donald Trump's hand and smiled after winning awards for courage and accountability for their reporting on Trump's relationship with convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Here's the presenter, Wolf Blitzer, detailing what Donald Trump put these journalists through.

[Wolf Blitzer (Presenter)]

Despite the president's threat of a lawsuit, the Journal published a story about a provocative letter to Epstein bearing President Trump's signature. Trump quickly filed a $20 billion lawsuit against the Journal, revealing reporter Khadija Safdar's home address. Her family had to be relocated. The Journal was kicked off of Air Force One. But the reporters continue to file revelatory stories.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

When it was time for Donald Trump's keynote speech, the journalists in the room endured petty and cruel insults for their colleagues, their friends, and the concept of democracy itself. And again, either out of deference or fear or agreement, we don't know. Some of them even applauded, as Status News puts it. Quote, over the course of more than an hour, Donald Trump offered a meandering and cringeworthy speech that devolved into a barrage of personal insults and crude attacks. Stripping away any pretense that the evening would serve as a celebration of the First Amendment. He derided CNN's Kaitlan Collins with a vulgar personal attack. He slammed the Wall Street Journal's Josh Dossey. He resurrected old insults for Gavin Newsom, Elizabeth Warren, and Chris Christie. He called J.B. pritzker a, quote, fat pig. He demanded Congresswoman Omar, quote, get out of our country. He trashed Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and Stephen Colbert as, quote, terrible and sick people. The room responded largely with hushed silence as Donald Trump delivered one attack after another. The result was a public humiliation for the White House Correspondents association, all while Donald Trump told them they should be grateful for it. Watch.

[Donald Trump]

But you people have no idea how lucky you are. When I'm gone, you're all going to be broke. Your business model is going to be finished. No, it's true. When I'm not around, you're going to be broke. There's not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about anybody else. I want to save your ratings. I'm pleased to announce my intention to, and this is somewhat of a scoop, my intention to run for a fourth term as president of the United States. I will be doing that. I will be having an official. In fact, I think I have. Yeah, I won three times now. I'm going to do it again. Thank you. I'm going to do it.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

And then they applauded, as you heard there on the tape, the White House Correspondents association embracing a man seeking to destroy everything they are supposed to stand for as well as our very democracy is where we begin today, rather tragically, some of our favorite reporters and friends, former CNN chief White House correspondent and author of News Not Noise on Substack. My old friend Jessica Yellen is here and I'm so happy to see you. Also joining us, voting rights attorney and founder of Democracy Docket. Mark Elias is back. I'm equally happy to see you, my friend. And I'm always happy to see Puck News senior political columnist national affairs analyst John Halman is here. Jessica, I start with you. I want to just put up what you've already posted and then ask you to expand on it. You said, quote, I think the invitation to the president outlived its purpose. He should not be invited in the future. And the press should start standing up for one another in real time. I didn't play because I don't really want to rebroadcast them, but I do want to share with anyone who was doing other things over the weekend what Donald Trump said about Kaitlan Collins, who works at cnn, where you were for many years. He said this, quote, I want to personally congratulate CNN's Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award. It was all about me. It was fake. She shouldn't get the award. It was fake. But I didn't mind. I said, caitlin, congratulations, but it was fake. There's no question about it. But she's a young, attractive woman. She never smiles. I said, caitlin, do you ever smile? Smile? You have a nice position. You're at CNN Fake news. You should be a happy person. So smile, Caitlin, just smile. But we attack. And I thought Caitlin really made it with a big major new sponsorship. But then I informed her that it wasn't her on the Bud Light can. It was Dylan Mulvaney. And Dylan Mulvaney cost Bud Light $35 million in market cap. That was the worst commercial ever made, by the way, your thoughts, not just to the president, but the response he got first.

I thought it was an abomination. We should just acknowledge Kaitlan Collins is an exceptional reporter and a lovely person, and no one in this role should be on the receiving end of that attack. His misogyny is well known. He does this to women journalists in particular. But no one was off limits to him that night. You know, you mentioned at the beginning something I had said, which is that this dinner in its current form has outlived its purpose. As you and I both know, this dinner is sort of meant as a ritual of civility, to demonstrate that even though the press and the White House officials are adversarial by day, we are still Americans first who share the same project, which is supporting democracy. And we're modeling that we can get along even when there's conflict that is no longer on the table. The President has put that to bed. And participating in this event with him perpetuates a fiction that serves him and actually undermines the public's trust in the press. I think. I'm not saying the dinner should end. I think this dinner should continue. White House correspondents deserve their night of recognition and community, but it can be done without inviting the president. And I think next year it would be an absolute tragedy if the president is invited. They should get together and celebrate one another and. And then you don't have to worry about who's applauding what. I'll say, maybe those applause came from administration officials in the audience. I want to believe that, but I don't think they should be invited next year.

Mark Elias, your thoughts?

[Mark Elias (Voting Rights Attorney)]

Look, I think that dinner should have been canceled years ago. I mean, like, people are watching this. This video or. And acting like somehow this is new. I mean, Donald Trump has been a misogynist towards female reporters for years. He has attacked Kaitlan Collins for years. He has been lying about elections for years. What we saw him do on Friday night was nothing unexpected. It's more of the same. And to me, you know, my question to the journalists in the room is, why were you there? I mean, why did you show up to a dinner that honors the President, United States, this President, United States. And when he started saying these things, why didn't you boot? Why didn't you walk out? Why did you sit there and politely applaud or giggle or laugh or make small talk with Stephen Miller or just eat. I mean, go eat someplace else. You know, the institutional corporate media wonders why it is that it keeps losing, you know, the trust of the American public. It's dinners like that is why you lose the trust of the American public. Because Donald Trump is putting on a hat, saying he's running in 2028, and you're sitting there eating a dinner.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

Heilman, the New York Times stopped attending in 2007 or eight, sort of taking a stand against this dinner. But as I said at the beginning in disclosure, my very fine news organization was represented at this dinner. I want to read you what the the organization itself says the purpose of it was. While we have an advocacy role for our members, we also have a diplomatic role. This is from Wei Xiaojiang. When I became president last July, my goal was to restore and normalize the relationship with the White House. We have to have a functioning relationship so that our members can do their jobs. I think the New York Times would describe their relationship as, quote, functioning. It just opted out of the optics of schmoozing with any White House right before Donald Trump ever wins. Right. Nine years before Trump is ever president. They opt out of this ritual, or I think it's now fair to call it a charade of diplomatic engagement because, you know, for whatever purposes. And I want it without again, singling out any individual journalists. I want to ask you if there's any poor where. I mean, I would think that that point would be subpoenaing five New York Times reporters or calling journalists piggy or threatening the press as, quote, enemies of the people. But I wonder if you think there's any line where this is uncalled for.

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

I think the line was crossed, Nicole, around the time that the New York Times stopped going to the dinner. I frankly, I mean, I am not one. I'm not by nature like a censorious person, and I'm not by nature like a priggish person or like an uptight person about the various things. I haven't been to the dinner since 1999, and I stopped going because, frankly,

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

I found it really tedious and super boring.

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

And it was clear then.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

Then it was clear that this is not, this is not a new thing in our career. And again, we can focus on Donald Trump if we want.

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

But I do think it's important to step back.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

Americans hate Washington. They hate the establishment of politics. They hate the establishment media. They hate the sense that their interests

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

are not being looked out for by anybody in establishment politics or establishment media.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

And the spectacle that this thing had become long before Donald Trump came to

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

town of bipartisan schmooze.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

And I take Jessica's point. I know what the dinner's supposed to be.

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

It's supposed to be this symbolic thing that she just said, which is that we can put aside the adversarial structure of reporters and the people they cover because we're all committed to the notion of American democracy.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

I get that. What it looked like long ago was that it was a glam party filled with paparazzi where people in Hollywood got to pretend like they were or people in Washington got to pretend like they

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

were in Hollywood to dress up and

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

eat fancy food and drink a bunch of drinks with the people they cover in a really schmoozy, really kind of cozy, kind of incestuous way that perpetrated the. The and promulgated the view that a lot of Americans have of the establishment in general that is typified by the

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

establishment they see on display in the

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

politics and the media and Washington, D.C. i don't think it helps anybody to have this dinner and I don't think it helped anybody to have this dinner long before Donald Trump came to town. Now, I don't want to say that

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

it's not worse now.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

It's worse now for all the reasons you guys have laid out, which is that Donald Trump takes a crap on

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

the, on the people that are in

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

that room, takes a crap on democracy, takes a crap on, on all the

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

ideals that the dinner is supposed to be about.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

And I will, I agree with you. We shouldn't single out individuals except in this way. And this gets to something Mark just said, I know why reporters go. They go because their organizations want them to go. They went and bought a table. They had won an award. Their organization said, we're going to go and accept this reward. And so they got to fight with their bosses about whether they should go to this dinner.

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

In a time when our business is

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

shrinking and when jobs are scarce and

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

when people are fighting themselves out of

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

work left, right and center, no one wants to fight with their, with their

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

institution over whether they should go to this dinner or not.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

So if the institution buys a table and they've won an award, they are going to go. But then they are going to go there and be subjected to the spectacle of these Wall Street Journal reporters who did this incredible work on the Epstein story, getting put on that stage in front of Donald Trump, smirking, laughing at them. And then when they left the stage, Trump singling out reporters and saying, this reporter has been brutal to me, has covered me, has been so tough on me over the course of the years. And now he's up here shaking my hand and giving me a hug, like he's, like, incredulous at the fact that he can get away with this and that these reporters who I do not blame, are put in that position. They're put in that position by their bosses. They're put in their position by these institutions. And the institutions are the ones that

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

need to recognize that the dinner, if it ever had a purpose as long ago, outlived that purpose and need to.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

Again, to Jessica's point, who I respect a lot, if the White House correspondent wants to have a dinner that involves the press, honoring the press for its good work, I'm down for that. I'll come to that dinner. If it's going to be cocktails and canapes and paparazzi, the receiving line and all that bullshit, I don't think that serves the press interests. I don't think it serves democracy's interest. I don't think it serves anybody's interests. So the whole thing should be torn down to the studs and then rebuilt.

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

If it's going to be rebuilt in

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

a mindful way that benefits our business

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

and benefits the things that our business is supposed to serve in terms of the First Amendment and democracy, there's a

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

dinner to be had. But it's not this dinner.

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

And it wasn't this dinner even 20 years ago, before Donald Trump arrived in Washington.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

Yeah, I mean, Jessica, I just jotted down a list right before we came on the air. Everything from kicking the AP out of the pool because they wouldn't call it the Gulf of whatever he wanted to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the war against the Pentagon press corps, the first term, describing the press as enemies of the people. And the publisher of the New York Times said that threatens people's lives all around the world. Trump doubled and tripled down and still does it, describing in his own words the settlement from ABC and CBS as payouts. Basically to him saying, quote, we're going to fix you. To Jake Tapper about cnn, about Barry Weiss and his friend Larry Ellison taking over CNN if that merger goes through. The subpoenas for the New York Times a week ago over coverage of the Qatari gifted Air Force One that he didn't like the leak investigations that all of Cash Patel's coverage has garnered, and then the smears. I mean, let me just play you the way he talks about female reporters.

[Mark Elias (Voting Rights Attorney)]

Quiet.

[Eugene (Co-host of Clock It Podcast)]

Quiet.

[Donald Trump]

Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? The corrupt reporter standing right there never smiles. She never says, a young beautiful woman never smiles. I never see a smile off her face. None of the secretary, obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious, a terrible. Actually a terrible reporter. I think you are A terrible reporter. You're all psyched. Somebody psyched you over at abc. They're going to psych it. You're a terrible person and a terrible reporter.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

Now, the insults are strategic on his part. They're designed to intimidate people from asking tough questions. And people, I think, thought that was it. But they've been followed up in a second term with the $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times last September with these subpoenas for journalist phone marks. And this is just what we know about, right? This is just what's gotten out. I mean, the war on the First Amendment isn't a slogan, you know, that journalists say they feel threatened. It is an actual practical operational plan that goes from Brendan CARR the FCC to Donald Trump in the Oval Office to his now sycophantic leaders of doj. Is the appropriate response to be in a room with him at all?

You know, I think about this all the time, Nicole, because I spent so many years as a White House reporter and wondering, you know, what's. What's the best way to exist in that skin right now? And I want to say first, on a personal level, this is abuse. Those people are standing there getting abused by him, and they're doing exactly what you're not supposed to do, which is take it in silence, right? As a human, you're not supposed to. But because they're occupying this position on behalf of half of their network, which, as John correctly points out, is a job at a time, it's very hard to get media jobs. There's, you know, there's all these conflicting emotions a person has to have in that position. I would say, structurally, Trump is being very successful with this. He has declared this war on the media in a litany of ways, all the ways you named and many more. And he's succeeding because trust in the press, especially legacy media, and as John points out, Washington media has absolutely plummeted. So the way that news media has been responding him to date is not working. It is not actually building trust with audiences. I hear it from my audience all the time. What I hear, because I do my work online, I have a lot of dialogue, and I hear back from the audience. And what they say to me is, I don't understand why they don't stand up for one another. Like when he attacks Caitlin, why doesn't the next person say something as simple as Mr. President, Caitlin is a fantastic journalist and a wonderful colleague. And my question to you is, where is all the money from Venezuela going? Like, just do it and keep rolling. I think that is one appropriate response, but I think that there needs to be a rethinking because it looks like the press is being ritually humiliated and the public is either chortling with him or losing respect on a personal level. It's undermining to these people and it's undermining to the organizations. So the simplest thing is for each of those reporters to stand up for one another. And then, I don't know, how much do you lose by not showing up there? He's tweeting all the time. He tells people what he's up. Do you need to be there? I don't know. It's a new moment. It's time for rethinking it.

Jessica Yellen, we so respect what you do with so much integrity. Thank you for being part of this conversation. Mark and John, stick around. Still ahead for us with Donald Trump and the GOP reading all the same polls that we are, there's brand new reporting that even his own White House knows how politically toxic he has become to Republican candidates. We'll look at what they're doing about it. Plus, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are playing politics with the men and women who risk their lives every single day in service of our country right now, fighting a war that was optional for Donald Trump. How he's twisting the truth about what's happening to them in Iran. And later in the broadcast, more truth twisting Trump's quote unquote warning about American history that he's posting outside one of the nation's biggest museums. All those stories and much more when Dead in White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Watch Disclosure Day at home now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Koepp, starring Emily Blunt, Josh o', Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson and Colman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required.

[Eugene (Co-host of Clock It Podcast)]

Also in theaters Monday.comAI agents took over my work and I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, Writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. I stay in the loop only when it matters. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com Simone Sanders Townsend and I have known each other for more than a decade, tussling over politics and policy when she worked in the White House and I reported on it.

[Simone Sanders Townsend (Co-host of Clock It Podcast)]

And now we're friends and colleagues.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

And on our podcast, Clock it, we are positioning ourselves at the intersection of culture and politics.

[Eugene (Co-host of Clock It Podcast)]

Clock it is where we talk about what we see and hear in the news. So you can start to clock it, too.

[Podcast Promo Voice]

Clock it with Simone and Eugene. All episodes available now.

[Jim Comey (Former FBI Director)]

Donald Trump has a bottomless desire to gain revenge against those who've criticized him. And I'm not going to stop criticizing him because I think that's a, that's required if you care about America. I am not only not guilty, I am innocent. And we will pursue this fully.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

That was from my latest interview with former FBI Director Jim Comey. After a second bogus indictment by Donald Trump's DOJ over that photo he posted of seashells on the beach that spell out the numbers 8647. Today, Jim Comey formally asked a federal judge to dismiss this case, saying the photo does not represent a true threat to the President. In his motion, Comey's Lawyers write that 8647 is, quote, a well known political slogan that expresses opposition to the president and that, quote, no reasonable observer would understand the phrase 8647 to connote violence at all, let alone to threaten that Mr. Comey personally would commit violence against the president. They continue, quote, but the government now singles out Mr. Comey to prosecute one of the president's most prominent critics for publishing another person's statement of political opposition. That attempt to suppress core political speech contravenes both the statutes at issue and the First Amendment. We're back with Mark Elias and John Heilman. Mark, this is important because for every single publicized case against a well known political opponent, are countless other attacks happening with people who maybe don't have access to the kinds of attorneys Tim Comey has and the public platform. But your thoughts about the legal argument he's making? Oh, you're on mute. You have to stop and start over.

[Mark Elias (Voting Rights Attorney)]

Sorry about that.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

That's okay. We'll always stop and start over for you.

[Mark Elias (Voting Rights Attorney)]

I think that there are two levels to his argument. The first is on the merits. He's absolutely right. The Supreme Court, by the way, including led by its most conservative justices, have really emphasized that the only actionable speech when it comes to the First Amendment and criminalizing it or even bringing civil cases for speech related activity is what's called true threats, which is a term of art that means that it is not just, you know, unpleasant speech, it's not just offensive speech, and it's not even just threatening speech. But it has to be very specific. It has to be a true threat. It can't be just sort of a generalized threat. But I think the strategic decision in filing this, I think, is what really needs to be focused on because I think a lot of people thought, you know, he would lead with a most motion for selective prosecution or vindictive prosecution. I think they led with this because they want to make a point that it is not that this will be dismissed on a technicality, but rather this will be dismissed. And by the way, this will be dismissed. This is a meritorious motion on the merits that, in other words, James Comey didn't commit a crime.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Right.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

That's so important and important distinction. John Heilman and the, you know, the sort of the, I don't even know if you call it case. Case law, but the history that's being created by federal judges who are looking at this feels like an important piece of the history of this moment that we get to cover in real time. You know, the judge who said that the Kilmar Abrego Garcia prosecution was reverse engineered by Todd Blanche is an important thing that people need to understand before they decide how to vote on Todd Blanche. The results of this will be an important piece of Todd Blanche's legacy as well.

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, one of the things that I, in my, in my rare idle moments, Nicole, find myself thinking about increasingly, is is the trying to take, try to keep a running tally of the damage that's been done to institutions in the government and institutions, norms, laws, etc. Over the course of the last 10 years and particularly the last 16, 17 months. And the reason I do it is because I think about whoever the people are running for president in 2028, and people who, beyond the presidential race, whether they're other races for other elected positions or people outside the government altogether who are cognizant of the notion that we are staring after Donald Trump is gone. We're staring at a very large project of democratic revival, restoration and renewal. These things that you're talking about, the judicial records in these cases, the details of. So the Justice Department has been debauched. And really there's so much institutional wreckage that's being left around by the Trump team. The doj, the wreckage is maybe the most grave and will take the most work to fix and then to get the restoration that will allow us to move forward and maybe hopefully at some point, some number of years or decades down the road, be back to where the DOJ is, where it was before Donald Trump arrived. But these, all of these things are important artifacts of that era, are things that people will want to look at and be able to study. You know, one of the most striking things I find when I talk to lawyers, and Mark and I have talked about this before, is just the fact that the presumption that the federal courts used to give to charities and the doj, which is that they were operating in good faith, that that is no longer the case, that. That they are presumed to not be acting in good faith as a kind of blanket presumption, is so extraordinary.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

And this case typifies that as much

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

as almost any case there is, because the obvious bad faith of the nature of why it was brought, how it was brought, the facts of it, et cetera, et cetera. So I think it's all super important, both in the short term and in the very, very long term, to get all this stuff very clear for the record.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

Yeah, I mean, Marcos, the twisted knot, I think that people have to untangle either as part of that immediate rebuilding. And I don't allow myself to think about it all that often, but I admire people who are thinking about it, is that it's the Supreme Court that gives Donald Trump immunity, which just logs in his brain and unleashes his most primal, animalistic sort of criminal fantasies as the president, United States. And then it actually isn't Trump that changes. Right. Trump first wants to prosecute Jim Comey in 2017. It's the kind of people that fill the ranks of the senior leadership at DOJ that changes. And the FBI. So the chapter will say Trump, as he started to want to do in 2017, had a desire to prosecute Jim Comey. But Sessions and Rosenstein and Barr and Whitaker, and I think there's someone else in there, they wouldn't entertain that notion because Jim Comey, whatever you think of him, isn't a criminal. But Todd Blanche did. What do you think about that part of.

Of the record?

[Mark Elias (Voting Rights Attorney)]

I mean, when I think about it, it makes me reflect on how you began this show. You began the show by doing something really hard, right. Which is that you called out the media for what it did at the White House correspondence. And what is not happening is the legal profession calling out the likes of Todd Bland. Right. Like, we're not. We're not reflecting the fact that what is happening at the Department of Justice is. Is an absolute corruption and an absolution perversion of justice. And, you know, I reflect on early in the administration, I came on your show, I was actually there in person And I had a little bit of a spirited debate with some of the other lawyers. In fact, it's funny, John was there at the table with me, and I think it was the Tish James indictment had just come now. And, you know, there was a lot of, some of some colleagues. I think Andrew was, Andrew Weissman was on. I think Lisa Rubin came on, and there was a lot of like, well, the rank and file lawyers at the Department of Justice are the, are the bulwark. And I was like, no, they're not the bulwark. Like, they work for Todd Blanche at that point. They work for Pam Bondi. Like, if you are a prosecutor in this Department of Justice, you work for Todd Blank. You work for Donald Trump. So don't sell me as something other than what you are. You're just a lawyer for this administration. And I think that that mindset is something we have to start to understand, which is that what has changed is, as you say, Donald Trump is now doing this, but he's not doing it himself. He's not sitting in the Oval Office with Stephen Miller drafting pleadings. These things are not being even written by Todd Blanche. They are being written by, and they are being argued and they are being filed by career prosecutors who have made a decision. They have made a deal that they are going to stick with the jobs they have. And here they are. And I remember when I said this those many months ago, I think it was Lisa who said, a lot of these lawyers, they don't have other jobs to go to. They have student loans. And my response is, you know, we're in a crisis of democracy, and everyone makes choices. And so the journalists made a choice to stand and sit in that room and not boo or walk out. And these lawyers are making a choice to file these pleadings and not resign.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

And what we have to continue to pick apart is, I think, where or if there's a breaking point, right, he's at 34% and falling. More federal judges have rebuked the Department of Justice than ruled in their favor. I believe that number holds up. I haven't recalculated it in the last few days, but I believe that counts up. There are more rebukes for the Justice Department, like, in one time zone than there are for the entire previous history. The existence of the Department of Justice, like, you could just take one part of the country. And the Justice Department has been rebuked in those offices more than it ever has since it has existed. So that is the record. That's, that's what Everyone who again, whatever choice they, they have made or they feel they don't have a choice, that's their record now as well. Mark and John, stick around. There's some breaking news to get to on Trump's fears about losing control in the midterms. That's next.

[Simone Sanders Townsend (Co-host of Clock It Podcast)]

This is a Monday.com ad, the same Monday.com designed for every team. The same Monday.com with built in AI scaling your work from day one. The same Monday.comwith an easy and intuitive setup. Go to Monday.com and try it for free. Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Psaki and more. Voices you know and trust. Ms. Now is your source for news, opinion and the world. Learn more at Ms. Now.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

Donald Trump is bringing his voter suppression obsession to the nation's highest court, where he feels he does pretty well most of the time. News breaking in just the last hour, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene and lift a block on an executive order that would have curbed the use of mail in ballots. That block was issued by a federal judge. I want to add to our conversation Democratic strategist Dan Cannon. He served as battleground director for the Harris Walls campaign. Mark Elias and John Heilman are still here. Heilman, your thoughts about this appeal? Obsessive voter suppression, rigging the midterms by any means, whole of government approach by the Trump administration.

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

Well, well, Nicole, I take all the adjectives you just applied and say those are my thoughts. I think, you know, we're, I mean, we talk about this frequently. I mean, I don't, Donald Trump there says a lot of stuff that he doesn't ever follow through on. He telegraphs a lot of punches he never throws, but he rarely throws a punch that he doesn't telegraph. And the thing that he's been telegraphing over and over again almost from the day he walked back in to the Oval Office in January of 2025, is that he had every intention of interfering with, putting his thumb on the scales around, messing with whatever the right phrase is. The November 2026 midterm elections.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

And that was before, long before his

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

political fortunes started to tank. And they have been tanking now consistently for a year. He's been on the broadest scale on the strongest issues he has, on the weakest issues he has, he has been in decline and his numbers have gotten perilously bad. And again, if you break them out and look at the cross tabs, it's on the most important issues to the electorate with the Most important segments of the electorate, the ones who are going to determine who controls Congress, independent voters on the economy on, again, even on issues that he's ostensibly been strong on, like immigration and crime, he's in a

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

huge, huge amount of trouble.

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

And I know we're going to talk about this. Reporting about the White House starting to tell the day finally coming that I've been predicting for weeks and months that the White House is going to start to tell endangered Republicans to start to put distance between themselves and the president.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

But the writing is on the wall, and there are two things on the wall. One piece of writing on the wall is Republicans are headed for to lose

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

the House and potentially lose the Senate.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

The other piece of writing on the

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

wall is Donald Trump is going to do something and he's telling us a

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

whole bunch of things. He's doing some things already. He's telegraphing other things, but he's going to try to stop that from happening by any means necessary. And anybody who's not taking that seriously

[John Heilman (Senior Political Columnist)]

at this point really needs to have their head examined.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

Mark Elias has been taking it seriously since before any of us was talking about any of this. This will likely be your legal fight. Your thoughts, Mark?

[Mark Elias (Voting Rights Attorney)]

Yeah. So it's something I've been thinking a lot about. Obviously, in litigating this case that's now in the Supreme Court involves an executive order that tries to do two things. It both leverages his power or his claimed power. In fact, the president doesn't have this power over the postal service to sort of control who can vote by mail. But what it leverages that for is to gain access to state voter data. And, you know, if the 2020 election was mostly in the courts about vote by mail, and the 2022 election in the courts was mostly about the massive voter suppression laws that Republicans enacted after the 2020 election. And the 2024 election was mostly about preparing for the possibility that Republicans wouldn't certify Kamala Harris or Joe Biden the winner. The 2026 election is about data. It's about data collection. And you and I keep doing these, these, these, these discussions. You know, Donald Trump has sent his Department of justice to sue 30 states to try to get access to their voter files. The Department of justice is 0 and 17. Oh, and 17. They have literally not won a single case. They lost before eight federal judges appointed by Donald Trump. And so that's like one part of it. They've tried to deploy the SAVE database, the Department of Homeland Security, and force states to use that. They're trying to leverage funds for FEMA and for national, you know, national for, for, for the defense of states to try to do that. The third part is this case where they're trying to use the postal service and say, hey, states, we're not going to send out any mail ballots. We're not going to carry your mail ballots. We're not going to allow voters to return their mail ballots unless you give us your data. So I ask you, why does Donald Trump want all the voting data in the country? And the answer is clear. Because he wants to be able to take that data, lie about what's in it, and then tell the states, if you don't remove these people, then all hell is going to break loose. We'll send ice, we'll send federal agents. We won't certify whatever it is. And I promise you what he sends back to the states will be inaccurate, it'll be racist, and it will be targeting Democrats. And that is his plan for 2026. The Supreme Court appeal is just the latest sign of it. And if people don't wake up and realize that that is how Donald Trump thinks he's going to win 2026, not by persuading voters, not by saying, running on your record, but by using this data to try to subvert the outcomes, then they are missing the real story.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

We're going to pull down in on all of this and how Democrats respond and protect democracy and the voter data on the other side. Marco, thank you for spending so much of the hour with us. Don't go anywhere. So there are 99 days to go until perhaps the most important midterms of our lifetimes, the November midterms. And finally, Republicans nationwide are officially beginning to panic about the disastrous political environment they face, the one that Donald Trump has created seemingly on purpose. The Washington Post describes GOP pollsters and campaigns as scared as they grapple with a major enthusiasm gap between voters of the Republican Party and voters in the Democratic Party. Ms. Naz Vaughn Hilliard and Jake Traylor are reporting that some inside Donald Trump's own political operation are giving the green light to Republicans on the ballot this November to run away from Donald Trump. From that reporting quote, with the president underwater on several pivotal issues, members of the party's rank and file are increasingly free to sidestep the scrutiny of Trump's inner circle, distancing themselves from his most controversial statements, his dismissiveness toward voters and economic anxieties and his war strategy. We're back with Dan Kenneden and John Heilman I mean, Dan, all I thought was, don't tell Donald Trump. This reporting suggests that someone wanted him to know anyway.

[Dan Cannon (Democratic Strategist)]

Well, sure. And can I call back to the last segment for a second? Nicole Heilman made the point that Donald Trump wants to win the midterms or prevent Democrats winning the midterms by any means necessary, with the exception of actually running on a record that could appeal to the American people on lowering costs and meeting them on their needs. On affordability, he'll do anything but that. In Pennsylvania a few months back, he did this rally, remember the first rally on affordability and lowering costs, and the first thing he did was call affordability a hoax. And then today on this announcement on the Supreme Court emergency order on mail in ballots. By the way, he voted by mail, even though he said today that he voted in person, which is a lie. That was also a public, excuse me, official event touted on the economy. So instead of talking about these issues that the American people are really upset about and want action on, he's going back to the big lie, back to this hoax, conspiracy theory stuff. Tweeting, you know, hundreds of times yesterday for hours. These memes, often the same meme again and again and again. You know, I think they are sheltering him from this where they can. And perhaps he's just distracted. He's never been interested in governing really. But the American people have understood for quite some time that this president has no interest in following through on his decision to lower costs or his effort to lower costs. Instead, the big, beautiful bill and so many other things, the tariffs, the war in Iran with gas prices have made this really untenable economically. And voters across the board are very, very angry, especially Republican and swing voters.

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

Dan, how do you advise Democrats to deal with the economic anxiety that a vast majority of Americans say they feel? Close to 70% of all Americans. And the disapproval of Trump's job performance on economic issues like inflation and housing and everything under that umbrella, and his very public and brazen grifting and stealing from the taxpayer and enriching himself and his kids.

[Dan Cannon (Democratic Strategist)]

You have to pair the two things, Nicole. I think they're both really important together, and it tells the story of who he is and what's happening right now. You know, look, the American people in 2024 decided the Democrats and Joe Biden and the entire administration wasn't focused enough on costs. And they were angry, and they made that really clear. And then they voted for a new president to come in, a new party to come in and govern on the promise of getting that under control. And they feel totally gaslit about that. But it's one thing to feel gaslit and angry. It's not happening. It's nothing to have the motivation behind that. And when, you know, Donald Trump and his family are making billions of dollars. I was on another program about a week or so ago where Republican operatives suggested they're going to make this election about families. Who's doing better for your family? Republicans are the party of families. There's only one family in this country doing well right now and it's a Trump family. Billion and a half in crypto, half a billion in foreign investments through golf and other other deals. He's striking which are clearly to curry favors. And by the way, that's just the stuff that he's reported. I mean, it's got to be much, much worse than that. And at the same time, you know, gas was supposed to be down below $2 a gallon according to Trump. And that's been above 4 and above $5 a gallon in some cases. That's a billion dollars a day out of consumers pockets. We don't talk enough still about the Obamacare experience where 20 million Americans have now seen either health care bills go up by 800 bucks, 1,000 bucks a month, which for someone making 50, $60,000 a year is impossible. And the result has been either they're paying that and they can't afford it, or they're simply off the exchange and they have no insurance. And so they're strapped and pulled in both directions. So they're paying more at the pump, they're paying more for groceries, they don't have health care or it's bankrupting them in real time. And at the same time, he's out there bragging about the investments and the deals that he's cutting for himself. I think those things together are the message for Democrats. And getting back to the idea that we're with you on the economy, we're with you on job creation, on lowering costs, on health care, we're going to do something about this. And when we go after Donald Trump on corruption, it's got to be on that basis to get back more money in your pocket and out of his

[Nicole (Host/Interviewer)]

$2 billion, if that doesn't make you mad and you voted for Donald Trump, I just at this point, not sure what will. Dan Cannon, and it's great to see you. John Hallman, thank you for spending the hour with us. When we come back, the Pentagon and the White House are hiding some very real and tragic facts. And realities about Donald Trump's war with Iran. Much more news still to come when Deadline White House continues after a quick break.

[Podcast Promo Voice]

Join Ms. Now live in texas for our biggest event yet with rachel maddow, jen psaki, michael steele and more. Mississippi now live together in texas september 26th. Get tickets today at Ms. Now together.