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      Sheet show: MyPillow pitchman Mike Lindell’s Trumpified ‘news venture’

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      Millions of votes were stolen in the presidential election – only in the 2020 one, the 2024 one was fine. Freedom is under attack! DEI judges are going after Americans! President Trump is keeping his promises. Freedom is making a comeback! Bed sheets, any size, any color, are available for $25 a set if you use the promo code L77, offer is for a limited time only.Welcome to LindellTV, a strange mashup of a rightwing conspiracy theory news channel and bedroom-focused shopping platform.LindellTV is one of several pro-Trump media outlets that was granted highly prized White House press credentials earlier this year – a move the government said would boost democracy, but which so far seems to have only boosted “make America great again” propaganda.Founded by Mike Lindell, a pillow company CEO turned election fraud obsessive, LindellTV features fawning coverage of Trump and his allies, mixed in with conspiracy theories about voting machines – an issue which has already seen Lindell sued for millions of dollars. The channel isn’t carried by any actual television network, and its production values are comically poor, but that hasn’t stopped LindellTV working its way into the highest arena of US journalism.Access to the White House briefing room, where the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, holds daily briefings for the world’s media, is highly coveted, and eyebrows were raised when the likes of LindellTV and Steve Bannon’s podcast were invited in. Only about 60 journalists can fit in the room, where they get a chance to ask tough questions of the government, an opportunity to hold the White House to account on behalf of the US and the world.LindellTV reporters rarely take that chance.“Will you guys also consider releasing the president’s fitness plan?” Cara Castronuova asked Leavitt in April, after the White House said it would share results from Trump’s annual medical exam.“He actually looks healthier than ever before, healthier than he looked eight years ago, and I’m sure everybody in this room can agree. Is he working out with Bobby Kennedy, and is he eating less McDonald’s?”The addition of friendly media outlets like LindellTV has helped take the edge off what has been a traditionally adversarial relationship between journalists and the White House press secretary. But it has also denied a seat at the table for people who might ask questions not about the remarkable health of the 78-year-old, 224lb president.Instead, LindellTV’s daily content features hourlong shows from obscure rightwing podcasters, each lining up to tell the viewers – no data is available on how many people actually watch the network – what a superb job the Trump administration is doing.The flagship show is hosted by Lindell himself, a Minnesota-born, moustachioed businessman whose MyPillow business enjoyed relative success before being dropped by almost all high street retailers after Lindell descended into election conspiracy chaos.Lindell broadcasts his litany of conspiracy theories from what appears to be his home, but sometimes he does a walkabout, as was the case on Thursday, when he co-hosted The Mike Lindell Show from outside the White House. Most of his theories relate to judges “going after” him over his sustained and untrue claims that the 2020 election was stolen.A segment on Thursday afternoon, nominally on “election integrity”, featured Lindell speaking into the camera for almost an hour, flanked by two women from LindellTV, each holding a microphone in front of their boss and each looking very bored.Atypically for a broadcaster, Lindell was on a phone call while speaking to the camera, and at one point put the caller on speaker so he could also address the viewers. The sound was muffled, and Lindell eventually hung up the phone – “I’ll call you later,” Lindell said – before throwing to a woman called Vanessa in the LindellTV studio.Vanessa wasn’t listening. “Are you there?” Lindell said.Vanessa snapped to attention. Lindell talked at her for three minutes, before asking that the channel’s producers show a photo on screen of him talking to the press. LindellTV duly flashed to a blurry photo of Lindell speaking to a row of cameras.Lindell paused, and Vanessa finally got the chance to say something.“The people are depending on you,” she told Lindell.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVanessa, with Lindell still on screen, asked her production team to play a clip of Trump speaking about Lindell at a rally. The viewers heard a panicked producer saying they didn’t have that footage, a message Vanessa relayed to viewers, before Lindell took charge, imploring people to buy his pillows and bedsheets.“They’re $25 a set,” Lindell said. “Any size, any color, while they last,” he added. The network then showed the MyPillow website, as Lindell told the production team to scroll down to the particular product he wanted people to buy. “We have over 250 products!” Lindell told the viewers.One of the reporters then joined in to tout the benefits of MyPillow “dream sheets”. “Most comfortable, best, softest sheets of my life,” she said.It was an unusual segment for a news network, and got stranger when one of the reporters then went on to urge people to buy Lindell’s book.“You will not ever have a dull moment,” the reporter said. “And praise Jesus for bringing you through this whole journey.”This shopping channel oeuvre is interspersed with a difficult-to-follow list of Lindell’s grievances.Earlier this week, above a chyron that read “DEI judge is going after Mike!!!!”, Lindell continued his four-year crusade to, in his words, restore election integrity.“The United States has the worst, everybody, elections on planet Earth. There’s nobody worse than us. You can find communist countries – nobody has worse elections than the United States,” Lindell said.The channel then cut to an advert for MyPillow, of course, but also invited viewers to claim $20,000 in silver from a website called MikeLindellGold.com.When the Guardian tried to access the website, Google Chrome denied access, warning that it “might be trying to steal your information”.It was a neat metaphor for a channel that is built on chaos and slip-ups and dodgy facts and figures, a channel that despite those flaws, has been granted much sought-after access to the Trump administration. More

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      in US Politics

      Voice of America to resume airing after court halts Trump’s dismantling of broadcaster

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      Voice of America (VoA), the US-taxpayer funded news service for overseas listeners, could be back on the air as soon as next week, after a federal appeals court granted a temporary stay on an executive order dismantling the broadcaster.VoA was effectively shut down after Trump signed an order on 14 March dismantling or shrinking seven agencies including the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).The USAGM is an independent government agency that oversees VoA and distributes congressionally appropriated funds to several non-profit broadcasters which provide news and information in almost 50 languages in countries with limited or no access to independent media sources.After nearly every affected network sued, US district judge Royce Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, granted a preliminary injunction in late April, ruling that the executive order was arbitrary and likely exceeded the president’s authority.The Department of Justice appealed. On Thursday, a Washington DC federal appeals court, which included two Trump appointees, partly upheld the lower court ruling that will enable VoA to resume broadcasting while the appeal plays out.VoA staff can begin a “phased return” to the office and resume programming next week, according to an email from the justice department shared with the Washington Post. Some VoA and USAGM staff have had access to their government email accounts restored.But the latest court ruling was bad news for the other publicly funded broadcasters.The Trump administration’s freeze on congressionally approved funds for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks will remain in place while the lawsuit makes its way through the court.While VoA is a federal entity, the other broadcasters are private non-profit organizations. The funding freeze has already forced them to make staffing cuts and reduce content.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe USAGA had, until now, enjoyed bipartisan support, due to the vital role VoA and the other foreign-news broadcasters play in advancing democracy and US interests by reaching about 360 million people in countries that have little to no independent press.The Guardian has contacted both the USAGA and VoA for comment. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump signs executive order to cut funding for public broadcasters

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      Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to cut public funding for the news outlets NPR and PBS, accusing them of being biased.NPR and PBS are only partly funded by the US taxpayer and rely heavily on private donations.The US president has long had an antagonistic relationship with most mainstream news media, previously describing them as the “enemy of the people”.A notable exception is the powerful conservative broadcaster Fox News, some of whose hosts have taken on leading roles in his administration.“National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) receive taxpayer funds through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB),” Trump said in his executive order. “I therefore instruct the CPB board of directors and all executive departments and agencies to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.”He added that “neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens”.The CPB budget has already been approved by Congress through 2027, which raises questions about the scope of Trump’s order.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore than 40 million Americans listen to NPR public radio each week, and 36 million watch a local television station from the PBS network each month, according to their estimates.The NPR director, Katherine Maher, estimated in March that the radio station would receive about $120m (£102m) from the CPB in 2025, “less than 5% of its budget”.The media rights group RSF warned on Friday about “an alarming deterioration in press freedom” in the US under Trump and “unprecedented” difficulties for independent journalists around the world. More

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      in US Politics

      The loss of editorial freedom at 60 Minutes is a sorry milestone for US media | Margaret Sullivan

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      There have been so many red alerts for press freedom in the United States over the past few months that it can be hard to know which ones really matter.The one at CBS’s 60 Minutes really matters.It came as a one-two punch. First, Bill Owens, the highly respected executive producer of the venerable news show stepped down, writing in a letter to employees that he no longer felt he had crucial editorial independence. It had become clear, he wrote, “that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it”.Although he wasn’t specific, corporate interference was clearly the problem, as the network’s parent company, Paramount, has been trying to get federal approval for a big media merger.Owens’s departure was a shocker, but one that was mostly felt internally at CBS and in media-watching circles.Last Sunday night, the problem went public – dramatically so. One of the most well-known faces of 60 Minutes, the correspondent Scott Pelley, closed out the program with a remarkable statement to the audience. He praised Owens and made the context painfully clear.“Stories we’ve pursued for 57 years are often controversial – lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration,” Pelley said. “Bill made sure they were accurate and fair … but our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways.”Pelley said that, to date, no story had been killed but that Owens “felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires”.Pelley’s comments were picked up widely, and now the world knows that viewers can no longer fully trust what they see on the Sunday evening show that has done such important and groundbreaking journalism for decades.Of course, as with so many of the red alerts mentioned above – lawsuits, threats, changes in long-held practices that protect the public’s right to know – the problem involves Donald Trump’s overweening desire to control the media. Controlling the message is what would-be authoritarians always do.Trump sued 60 Minutes for $20bn a few months ago, claiming unfair and deceptive editing of an interview with his then rival for the presidency, Kamala Harris. And his newly appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, took an aggressive approach by reopening an investigation into CBS over supposed distortion of the news. The editing of the Harris interview, by all reasonable accounts, followed standard practices.What has happened with 60 Minutes is a high-octane version of what is happening everywhere in Trump 2.0.Those who could stand up to Trump’s bullying are instead doing what scholars of authoritarianism say must be avoided, if democracy is to be salvaged. They are obeying in advance.Not everyone, of course. It’s inspiring to see prominent institutions – Harvard and other universities, many law firms, Georgetown law school and the Associated Press – refusing to buckle.They may pay a price. Perhaps a lucrative merger won’t go through, perhaps important federal grants will be lost, perhaps they’ll lose access to news sources, or be punished in some other way. But they’ll have their reputations and integrity intact.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor universities, for law firms and certainly for media companies like CBS, that’s extremely important.And what’s more, yielding to Trump’s bullying is never successful in the long run. The goalposts of appeasement will be moved, again and again.Just think of what happened with Jeff Bezos, who has put at risk the editorial independence of the Washington Post, which he owns, in order to please Trump and protect the fortunes of his companies, including Amazon.Did all his bending the knee – including killing a Post endorsement of Harris just before the election – buy him long-term protection? Certainly not. When Amazon reportedly planned to display the cost of Trump’s tariffs next to prices on the site, the White House went ballistic, calling it a “hostile and political act”.You can guess what happened next. Amazon buckled, disavowing and scrapping the plan.If the rich and powerful won’t stand up to Trump, what hope can there be for the disenfranchised and powerless?Journalists at 60 Minutes are telling us that Shari Redstone, the executive and heiress who is the controlling shareholder of Paramount, is doing real damage by appearing to intrude into her venerable show’s independence. She may get the merger she wants but only at great cost to the journalism of which she should be a stalwart steward.There was another road to take – certainly a less traveled one but one with a far better destination in mind.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      in US Politics

      Why is the US sleeping as autocracy approaches? | Governor Jay Inslee

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      When a woman asked me a couple of weeks ago why leaders were not standing up to Donald Trump, my thoughts went immediately to political leaders. When I started to answer, she corrected me and said: “No, no, I’m talking about college presidents and law firms. Where the heck are they?”Where indeed? From all observations, most have been asleep as the US president dismantles democracy piece by jeweled piece. They are either cutting sweet little deals on their knees, or just remaining silent as the fruits of 250 years of national labor and life are strangled by Trump’s tentacles. From the cowering of major media companies to the shameful capitulation of some law firms, and oppressive silence from virtually all of them, the nation is sleepwalking into a slow but ever encroaching totalitarian state.As the woman continued her outpouring of anger and grief, I thought of John F Kennedy’s Pulitzer prize-winning book, Why England Slept, his brilliant exposition of why a proud and resilient nation ignored Germany’s mounting threat to their democracy when it was so obvious and imminent. Kennedy recognized the centrality of moments we now face, writing: “Any system of government will work when everything is going well. It’s the system that functions in the pinches that survives.” We are now being pinched by an autocrat who eats laws for breakfast and will not be stopped by any internal restraint.Whether our democracy survives to preserve the rule of law depends on so much more than senators and representatives. In a way, they are merely personal reflections of the public’s will. Depending exclusively on their personal commitment to the constitution is a good bet for the party now in the minority, but a sore loser for the majority party, or more accurately, the majority cult. The moment demands so much more than eloquence on the floor of the House and the Senate – it demands full-throated, continuous and united rebellion against the perverse oppression and malignant illegality of this authoritarian in the White House.Unfortunately, we are not seeing the necessary courage, not in the east, not in the west, not in large law firms, not in boardrooms, not in school district superintendents, not in chambers of commerce. The silence is deafening.Where was the united voice of major law firms when Trump maliciously began to target several of them? They were hiding. Where are the concerted voices of college presidents as their colleagues are being hung out to dry? Do they not teach history at these colleges, where any freshman could tell you that the Trump plan is right out of every autocrat’s playbook? First you tame the press, then you tame the colleges, then you tame the law firms so that no one can even get to court, then you eventually ignore the orders of the supreme court.We are well on our way to that final death knell of democracy, as we advance through the first three steps.My motivation to rally for our country is not driven solely by my love for democracy. Like millions of Americans, I see my own family being jeopardized by Trump’s callousness. I have seen first-hand the power of special education teachers to raise the prospects of special needs kids in my clan. I rebel at the Musk-Trump administration’s chainsaw attack eliminating the one agency that safeguards our kids’ access to special education investments, the US Department of Education. To Elon Musk, the department may be just a bureaucracy – to our family, it is a guardian angel.Is this passivity and lack of resistance understandable? Of course it is. That’s why the old saw “first they come for the … then they come for you” was invented.But we should call upon our college presidents, law firms, leaders of civil society, to get in touch with their responsibility to democracy itself, as well as their own institutions, which surely will end up on the firing line someday if Trump continues to be emboldened by his victims’ servility.Perhaps it is too strong to refer to these organizations as collaborators. Perhaps. But this wholesale timidity and collapse must be considered rank appeasement at best, modest complicity at worst.Kudos to Harvard University, Perkins Coie and others who have stood up, but some of the finest higher educational institutions in world history are now ignoring the well-trod path of autocracy in world history. Some of the best and brightest law firms in the nation are now providing free legal services to the very administration that has broken laws beyond counting the very legal codes the law firms purport to defend.Certainly, these silent aiders and abettors can explain their individual decision making, but their cumulative damage to the very fabric of democracy calls us to heed Benjamin Franklin when he said we must “all hang together, or all hang separately”. Is it asking too much for the college presidents of the US to band together and say this choking of research funds is unacceptable? Are the law firms just too busy to all say they are not going to yield to Trump’s perverse bullying and say what any good lawyer ought to say: “We’ll see you in court”?In fighting Trump’s assaults on democracy, I speak from experience. As the first governor to come out against his Muslim ban, one of the most vocal in speaking out against his Covid negligence, and telling him to his face to stop tweeting and start protecting our children, earning me the honor of being called a “snake”, I know standing up brings the heat. So be it.But my more important experience is decades watching a courageous citizenry force its federal government to change course. In the 50s and 60s, the government was forced to change, thanks in large part to a woman refusing to sit in the back of the bus. In the 70s, the Vietnam war ended only because thousands marched, including myself, proving the ability of committed people, though unelected, to compel change. In the 80s it was private citizens who forced the federal government to start treating HIV patients like humans.In each of these decades, small acts of defiance led to national change as courage rippled outwards. The benefit of having lived these decades during the American experiment is learning that leaders in civil society who resist should be exalted, joined, and followed.Those who believe that this call to action is an overstatement of the threat understand neither the nature of the tyrant-in-chief nor the slow but inexorable nature of how democracies are lost. I witnessed Trump’s cruelty and lack of empathy as I dealt with him during the Covid pandemic, as he willfully withheld help and then consciously spread misinformation that caused so many needless deaths. Anyone who saw this up close would make the call for resistance I am making today. How can anyone not understand that the refusal to follow the law on January 6 continues in full force today? Why would it stop unless it is made to stop?More importantly, we should listen to the late Justice William O Douglas, who said: “As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” It is past time for all our leaders in civil society to wake up, stand up and speak up. We are right in calling them to do so. Hiding is no longer acceptable.

      Jay Inslee served as the governor of Washington from 2013-2025 More

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      in Elections

      ‘60 Minutes’ Rebukes Paramount On-Air Over Executive Producer’s Exit

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      The show’s top producer abruptly said last week he was quitting. “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways,” the correspondent Scott Pelley told viewers.In an extraordinary on-air rebuke, one of the top journalists at “60 Minutes” directly criticized the program’s parent company in the final moments of its Sunday night CBS telecast, its first episode since the program’s executive producer, Bill Owens, announced his intention to resign.“Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways,” the correspondent, Scott Pelley, told viewers. “None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”A spokesman for Paramount had no immediate comment, and has previously declined to comment on Mr. Owens’s departure.Mr. Owens stunned the show’s staff on Tuesday when he said he would leave the highest-rated program in television news over disagreements with Paramount, CBS’s corporate parent, saying, “It’s clear the company is done with me.”Mr. Owens’s comments were widely reported in the press last week. The show’s decision to repeat those grievances on-air may have exposed viewers to the serious tensions between “60 Minutes” and its corporate overseers for the first time.Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Paramount, has been intent on securing approval from the Trump administration for a multibillion-dollar sale of her media company to a studio run by the son of Larry Ellison, the tech billionaire.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hakeem Jeffries and Cory Booker livestream sit-in against GOP funding plan

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      House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and New Jersey senator Cory Booker were holding a sit-in protest and discussion on Sunday on the steps of the US Capitol in opposition to Republicans’ proposed budget plan.Billed as an “Urgent Conversation with the American People”, the livestreamed discussion comes before Congress’s return to session on Monday, where Democrats hope to stall Republicans’ economic legislative agenda. Throughout the day, they were joined by other Democratic lawmakers, including the senator Raphael Warnock, who spoke as the sit-in passed the 10-hour mark.The proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year, the New York Times reported on Friday, includes cuts to programs that support childcare, health research, education, housing assistance, community development and the elderly.“Republican leaders have made clear their intention to use the coming weeks to advance a reckless budget scheme to President Trump’s desk that seeks to gut Medicaid, food assistance and basic needs programs that help people, all to give tax breaks to billionaires,” Booker and Jeffries aid in a statement.“Given what’s at stake, these could be some of the most consequential weeks for seniors, kids and families in generations,” they added.Booker wrote separately on X: “This is a moral moment in America. Sitting on the Capitol steps with Leader Hakeem Jeffries this morning to discuss what’s at stake with Trump’s budget and affirm the need for action to protect Medicaid, food assistance, and other safety net programs.”Booker and Jeffries started their sit-in around 6am and were joined by lawmakers including Democratic senators Chris Coons and Angela Alsobrooks and representatives Gil Cisneros and Gabe Amo, among others.Reverend Dr William J Barber II and the National Education Association president, Becky Pringle, also joined. Pringle said the Trump administration was perpetuating “the greatest assault on public education that we’ve ever seen in this country”.Democrats and independents have added a new degree of physicality to their opposition to the Trump agenda. Earlier this month, Booker set a new record for the chamber’s longest speech when he held the floor, without a bathroom break, for more than 25 hours.Booker said he was doing so with the “intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States senate for as long as I am physically able” in order to protest the actions of Trump and his administration.The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, an independent, and the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been on a “Fighting Oligarchy” nationwide tour of the US to protest the “oligarchs and corporate interests that have so much power and influence in this country”.On Sunday, Sanders, who has accused Democrats of significantly ignoring working-class priorities, said that the party does not have “a vision for the future”.“You have Democrats appropriately, and I’m working with them, talking about Trump’s movement toward authoritarianism, vigorously opposing the so-called reconciliation bill to give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks for the 1% and make massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition and housing, opposing what Musk is doing to dismember the Social Security Administration and the Veterans Administration, making it hard for our veterans to get decent healthcare or benefits on time,” Sanders told NBC’s Meet the Press.Throughout Sunday’s livestreamed sit-in, groups of curious passersby also found themselves sitting on the Capitol steps listening and weighing in on the discussion. More

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      Journalists defend press freedom at muted White House correspondents’ dinner

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      Journalists rallied in defence of press freedom on Saturday, insisting they “are not the enemy of the people” at a Washington media gala snubbed by Donald Trump.The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner was a muted affair with no US president, no comedian and notably fewer politicians or Hollywood stars than in past years.The event took place under the shadow of a second Trump administration that has launched a wave of fresh attacks on freedom of the press, barring the Associated Press from the presidential pool and moving to shut down the Voice of America broadcaster.In a typical year the president attends the WHCA dinner to congratulate journalists on their work, give a jokey speech and take it on the chin as a comedian jabs at their expense. But Trump, who has branded the media “the enemy of the people”, gave the dinner a wide berth during his first term and stayed away again this time.Eugene Daniels, who leads the WHCA, noted that presidents from both sides of the political spectrum are invited every year. “We don’t invite presidents of the United States to this because it’s for them,” he said. “We don’t invite them because we want to cosy up to them or curry favour.“We don’t only extend invites to the presidents who say they love journalists or who say they’re defenders of the first amendment and a free press. We invite them to remind them that they should be.”Daniels then showed a video montage of past presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, addressing the dinner with self-deprecating jokes while also expressing their admiration for the press and its central importance in safeguarding democracy. Trump was conspicuous by his absence.As guests watched, Daniels continued: “We journalists are a lot of things. We are competitive and pushy. We are impatient and sometimes we think we know everything, but we’re also human. We miss our families and significant life moments in service to this job.“We care deeply about accuracy and take seriously the heavy responsibility of being stewards of the public’s trust. What we are not is the opposition, what we are not is the enemy of the people and what we are not is the enemy of the state.” The giant ballroom erupted in applause.The Trump administration has had multiple skirmishes with the press in recent months. Federal funding for public broadcasters NPR and PBS is under threat. Trump has also launched legal assaults on private network CBS and the local Des Moines Register newspaper in Iowa, and brought to heel ABC, which paid $15m under threat of a libel lawsuit.The dinner announced scholarships for aspiring journalists and paid tribute to trailblazing figures in White House press history. It presented awards recognising excellence in reporting, writing and visual journalism. Winners delivered acceptance speeches that were careful not to criticise Trump directly but did unite around the theme of defending the first amendment, which protects freedom of speech.Alex Thompson of Axios, who won an award for coverage of Biden, silenced a room that was otherwise buzzing all night when he called out the media for failing to adequately investigate Biden’s mental acuity. The issue blew up when the 81-year-old gave a disastrous debate performance four months before the election.“President Biden’s decline and its cover up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception,” Thompson said. “But being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves.“We, myself included, missed a lot of this story and some people trust us less because of that. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows. I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust and being defensive about the further erodes it. We should have done better.”It was a night of few laughs. The WHCA had invited then cancelled comedian Amber Ruffin after she referred to the Trump administration as “kind of a bunch of murderers” and asserted that “nobody wants” Trump to attend the dinner.Ruffin was excoriating in her response to being dropped, telling talk show host Seth Meyers: “We have a free press so that we can be nice to Republicans at fancy dinners. That’s what it says in the first amendment.”The dinner – a formal occasion where the dress code is tuxedos and gowns – has in past years hosted celebrities such as George Clooney, Carrie Fisher, Tom Hiddleston Scarlett Johansson, Sean Penn and Steven Spielberg. Not on Saturday, although Jason Isaacs, the British actor who stars in the latest series of The White Lotus, put in an appearance.White House officials and members of Congress were also unusually scarce but did include Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator for Minnesota. She told the Guardian: “I thought it was great. The dinner was back at its roots, honouring these incredible journalists and it was actually a lot of fun. I felt like I was at the journalists’ Academy Awards and it was really good.”Klobuchar added: “They hardly talked about Donald Trump. They just talked about their work and through Democratic and Republican presidents and why they do it.” More