Mike Madrid, Mike Zamore & Haddy Gassama

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:00)
Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast, and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Troy Jackson has officially been fit to challenge Senator Susan Collins in the great state of Maine. We have such a fantastic show for you today. The Latino Votes podcast host, Mike Madrid, talks to us about how MAGA is fracturing and how Latino voters are the new swing voters. Then we'll talk to the ACLU's Mike Zamore and Haddy Gassama about ICE's abuses inside New Jersey's Delaney Hall and other detention centers. But first, the news.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:44)
So, Molly, for some reason, we still have a White House Correspondence Dinner, despite it being an absolute failure of an event, as evidenced by Friday night's proceedings. Are you just still crying in your pillow that you didn't get to attend?

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:58)
So, I have always been a little bit of a contrarian on the White House Correspondence Dinner. Basically, since Trump has been president, since 2016, there's been a feeling, and it's grown over the last decade, that the White House Correspondence Association, well, they do good work, right? They do scholarships for students. They do public outreach.
They also are not doing themselves or any of us, any favors with this stupid dinner. So, the point of the dinner is, or at least the historic point of the dinner was, to raise money for scholarships, to highlight these scholar students, and to focus on the job of the White House Correspondence. Over the years, and the New York Times haven't been allowing their people to attend for like 10 years. I mean, you can go to cover, but they don't buy tables or anything. Basically, the event has gotten more and more unpalatable. Now, a few thoughts on the White House Correspondence before we get into what Donald Trump did, which everyone could have seen coming a million miles away, which is he gave a really mean, really hostile speech that was embarrassing, and I listened to some of it. I mean, it's really long, and in it, he's just mean and gross and mean to Caitlin Collins. But part of why it is, part of why I think it should be ended is because it's not... Look, when people report, they have to have sources, and some of those sources are going to be in the White House, whether or not the White House is filled with or not. You're going to have to talk to those people if you're going to report on them. But, that's just true. I mean, we may not like it, but it's true.
So some of the optics coming out of that dinner, like Stephen Miller yucking it up with real reporters, that stuff, it just looks really... The optics of it are horrendous. And then the other thing is that just the idea of this kind of like these cabinet members who are clearly really... I mean, some of them are doing some really sketchy stuff, and to have them sitting with journalists who cover them, and then having Trump, it's just so bad. This is my personal picadillo. I feel that the White House Press Association had more power than it thought, and should have when Donald Trump kicked out the AP for not calling the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, which was stupid, but it was a power grab. And what the White House Correspondence Association should have done was been like, okay, we're done, we're out.
Because this administration needs the media just as much as the media needs to cover this administration. But they didn't do that. And so what happened was they ended up in this situation where they've just had the White House has taken almost all their power away. They decide who's in the press pool. Things that historically were not true. They kicked out all the press pool at the Pentagon. Like they've just done a lot of stuff that has really limited press access.
And all the while, they've framed it as if the press was somehow the bad guys. I mean, like my husband, don't necessarily like straight reporting. Feel that a lot of times straight reporters give this administration the benefit of the doubt when they shouldn't, but it doesn't matter. Like the only way you're going to be able to hold power to account is with straight reporting. And there's a reason that these people are so obsessed with ending the media. And it's because of things like this. And like that is why the White House Correspondents' Dinner is just so wrong for this moment. Like it just is wrong for this moment. You have people who are losing their lives at protests.