Caitriona Perry

Hi Brendan, how are you?

Sure, yeah.

So the White House Correspondents' Dinner is a big night every year that all of the journalists like myself who cover the White House gather together and the Americans would describe it as celebrating the First Amendment, which is part of the Constitution that protects free speech and freedom of the press and so on.

And it's one of those nights where

Everyone sets aside their differences, shall we say, and gathers together.

And whoever's in the administration, you'll have people there from that administration.

You'll have whoever's out of power at the time, members of Congress there as well, ambassadors.

You often have a lot of celebrities and tons of movie stars there and TV stars and so on.

And it has been tradition for many, many years that the President of the United States would make an address from the podium.

Now, that hasn't happened with President Trump until last night, and he said he was going to attend.

And so it's a point of great sort of controversy all week.

What would he say at this speech?

Because we know he has, let's say, a colorful relationship with journalists, to put it mildly.

So anyway, we're all there gathered at the Washington Hilton Hotel, known also locally as the Hinkley Hilton, because it's where there was an assassination attempt on

President Reagan back in the early 1980s.

So everyone's there.

There's a lot of security around the hotel, a lot of protesters.

It was raining last night, so everyone had to get out quite a bit from the hotel and walk there and all our finery and get a bit wet on the way.

And it's a huge, huge ballroom.

It holds about 2,500 people, so it's absolutely massive and everyone's wedged into it.