Chapter 1: What are the significant headlines from the Sunday newspapers?
Good morning. You're very welcome to the show. So look, we will go to Washington in a minute to Katrina Perry, who was in the room for those extraordinary events. at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night. But first, let's just have a look at our own front pages and meet our panel. So the Sunday Times is leading with homeowners warned on rush to build cabins, right?
So if you're planning to build a cabin in your back garden, consider yourself warned that they risk demolition orders if they proceed before the government formally signs off on the new planning exemption. The Sunday Independent is leading with number of super rich in Ireland doubles in five years, right? So just to annoy you here, the country now has 1885 high net worth individuals.
That's someone with a net worth of 20 million or more. That's double the number in 2020. The number of these such people is increasing by an average of 30 a month in the last six months alone. And the number of connected family members and trusts associated with the super rich is up to 3,400, and that's also up from 1,870 in 2020. So there are also 500 Irish tax sales abroad.
The Business Post have a poll, and they are saying historic low economic fears fuel backlash against coalition. We'll come to that. They... Irish Mail on Sunday is leading with an interview with the HSE consultant who exposed the Kerry Cam scandal, Dr. Maya Sharma, who is now homeless in London.
Chapter 2: What happened at the White House Correspondents' Dinner?
She says her biggest regret is she did not raise red flags earlier and she is unable to find a job right now, she says, because my forehead is tattooed at risk of reputational damage to organisations. The Sunday World is leading with cartels... Keating arrested in jail. That's Padraig Keating, who is one of the Kinahan gang. And the Murr is leading with the Kinahans as well.
Phone message evidence against Daniel Kinahan is so strong he is expected to plead guilty in an Irish court when he's extradited from Dubai, investigators believe. That's according to Michael O'Toole. Our panel this morning, Lucinda Creighton is the CEO of Vulcan Consulting and a former Minister of State for European Affairs. Louise Byrne is political correspondent with the Irish Examiner.
Larry Donnelly is a law lecturer at the University of Galway and a columnist with the Journal. Fergus Finlay is a columnist, former Labour Party advisor and former CEO of Bernardos. Good morning, everybody. And put on your headphones there, please. And we go to Washington. And of course, you heard on the news there, the big story overnight is.
the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Chief Anchor with BBC News, Catriona Perry, good morning.
Hi Brendan, how are you?
Well, I'm fine and I hope you are well and thank you very much for getting up to take this call because I know that you were working late into the night as well. So Catriona, you were in the room last night. Talk us through how it all unfolded from where you were sitting, please.
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?
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Chapter 3: How did Catriona Perry describe the atmosphere during the shooting incident?
anyway so you can get into the hotel without having to have you know a security sweep or anything like that because obviously there are guests in the hotel and there are drinks receptions that go on of people who aren't invited to the dinner as well but to get to where the dinner is you have to show a ticket you go down a set of escalators and then there's a kind of red carpet and all of that Did the security seem very tight to you walking in Katrina?
It was normal. As I say, when you approach the room is when the security is there. So you can be in the hotel, you can be in a couple of floors of the hotel before you have to engage with any Secret Service or law enforcement or anything like that.
And then you go through, similar to airport security, not as tight as airport security, but there's a magnetometer where you walk through, metal detector essentially. And there's also law enforcement personnel if you've got a handbag or a backpack or anything like that. We'll go through it.
And from there, then there's a drinks reception area and go down another flight of stairs into the ballroom itself. And it was at that security area, one flight of stairs from the ballroom, where this individual, I mean, you've seen the video the president shared, just rushes through the agents and then they race after him with guns.
So how did you, you're sitting at a table with people. How did you become aware what was going on?
So we're all in the room at this point in time. The official programme had started and I was sitting in a table kind of in the middle of the room. There's like an aisle going up the middle of the room and that's where I was. And we heard a commotion outside, some loud noises and the doors burst open.
There was kind of like a kerfuffle of breaking glass and crockery and tables being knocked over and Secret Service agents rushing up this middle aisle
beside the table where I was, with guns drawn, shouting, everyone take cover, everyone take cover, at which point everybody jumped under the tables in the dining room and the agents kept running towards the podium where the President was seated with the members of the White House Response Association, the First Lady, the Vice President.
At the same time, agents rushed in from the side of the stage as well, bundled everyone up there onto the floor, got the President, the First Lady and the Vice President out As you can expect, in a room full of journalists, we all had our heads under the table and our hands above our phones, recording what was going on.
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Chapter 4: What were the immediate reactions of the attendees during the shooting?
Were you given an all clear or how did it start resolving?
We weren't given an all clear as such, but it became obvious that there was no threat in the room at that point. So people started coming out from under the tables. Others did stay under there for a little bit longer. And then the agents with the lighter guns, let's say, sort of snubbed down or went in a different direction.
So then another set of Secret Service personnel came through and said, OK, everyone can come out from taking cover, but you can't leave the room. So then we were locked in the room for another period of time. And the president was still in the building at that point at the huge hotel complex. And then there was another period of confusion as to
You know, sometimes these things are drilled or false alarms. What's actually happened? What's going to happen next? And then it was decided that we would try and proceed with the programme. The White House Correspondents Association president, Rita Zhang, came to the stage and said, you know, everyone's OK. President's OK. No one's been injured.
We're going to try and go ahead with the programme. Everyone stay here. Then it emerged that a Secret Service agent had been shot, although, according to the president, was doing well, but is in hospital. And the gunman also in a local hospital in Washington, D.C. And then the law enforcement personnel decided that, no, this can't continue. It's an active crime scene and everyone has to leave.
So at which point the doors opened and everyone was kind of ushered out of the dining room.
So a two-pronged question then in terms of the aftermath of this. A, what do we know about the perpetrator, Cole Allen? And B, what are people saying? What do you think the kind of ramifications of this might be? Is this going to inflame things? What's the mood around it now? It's early to say, I know, but what soundings are you taking?
Yeah, I mean, it's just gone 6am in the morning here and I think most people, including myself, were working on air until a couple of hours ago. So, you know, we don't know is the short answer in relation to the gunman. He's in detention. I said he's in hospital. He is due to appear in court on Monday. I think the fact that he was a guest in the hotel and when he was,
you know, when he came into the ballroom area that he had a handgun, a shotgun and a number of knives on him and there's a search to be carried out of his room in the hotel.
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Chapter 5: What insights did the panel share about the implications of the shooting?
It's a very divided country right now. And, you know, particularly in the sort of political world, it's very, very tense.
OK. Chief Anchor with BBC News, Catriona Perry. Thank you so much, Catriona. I really appreciate that. I know you haven't had much sleep and you got up to do that for us, but it was great to get that view from in the room. Thanks, Catriona.
All right. Thanks.
Now, Larry Donnelly, as the American in the room, what are your thoughts right now?
I suppose immediately I'm glad Katrina and all the others who were there are OK. I'm hoping that the individual who apparently was wounded, I hadn't heard that Katrina was the first one to mention it.
I hope that he or she... I think he was wearing a vest and seems to be OK.
OK, well, that's good information. What strikes me immediately, I suppose, is the security issue. And, of course, the Secret Service, they're the experts. But I wonder about the venue.
I wonder why this individual, obviously with lethal intent, you know, a hotel where they're paying guests to get in that close proximity to the president of the United States when, as we were discussing earlier, there are almost an infinite number of other venues which would be much easier to secure than the Hilton Hotel. So I suspect this could prompt ā something, a review of where it's held.
Indeed, the president wanted to keep going. And he's saying, let's do this again in 30 days. We'll see where it is held ultimately. Now, of course, Cole Allen is going to be traversed with a fine tooth comb here to see what's in his social media background. We know one thing that has emerged already.
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Chapter 6: How does the panel view the current state of US politics?
And apparently people are saying it kind of cut the tension in the air.
Yeah. And I imagine. But he one journalist said to him and he was like, I'm not saying this in a disrespectful way, Mr. President, but why do you think this keeps happening to you? And he was saying, well, like, if you think of all the other presidents, as myself and Fergus were saying, he actually was failing to remember their names. But he was like, you know, Lincoln and all these people.
He was like, I'm not saying it's an honour, but like, you know, you know, it just goes to show how much good work I'm doing. And. You know, and anyone who there was an assassination attempt or, you know, an excess successful assassination on what we're like doing really good work. So like, you know, it's not an honor, but so he doesn't seem moved by it at all.
And I think in a way that's actually quite scary because it just goes to show how normalized things are becoming in America.
Yeah, Fergus, like not not to be in any way take from the gravity of this. Right. But it is almost just another rolling news story that in a way, like, are we becoming more and more unshockable about absolutely crazy things?
It's a rolling news story in which he is the centre. Now, that has never happened before, that Donald Trump has been the centre of global news. I mean, to be honest, I thought there were some good things about last night. The fact that nobody was seriously hurt.
I felt very sorry for poor old Wolf Blitzer, the CNN anchor, who clearly picked a very bad moment to go to the loo and got caught in the corridor with the potential assassin and had a very, very scary experience. And I'm not trying to make light of it.
I do think the other really great thing about the whole thing was that it spared the entire world Donald Trump's speech, the speech he was planning to make. Because you can absolutely depend on him doing 10 minutes of scripted and maybe an hour and a half of the rambling that he goes on with. Once he gets hold of a mic, he can't stop. He hates the media.
His definition of freedom of the press is fake news. He was going to have an unmerciful go
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Chapter 7: What are the economic concerns highlighted by the panel regarding wealth distribution?
And it's it's symptomatic of the fact that US politics is just so broken and so, so polarised. And to me, that's deeply concerning. It's not news, but it's deeply concerning. And and I agree with you. I don't I don't think at this point in time you can you should or ought to victim blame or.
somehow justify it I mean that's absolutely absolutely wrong and you weren't doing that for us I know no no I'm not suggesting that but I'm just saying you know because there's plenty of it already online you know and there will be and there's lots of people who will salivate at the prospect of the assassination of the President of the United States and I think
You know, the line that Michelle Obama used at one point, when they go low, we go high. That's a nice aspiration, but it doesn't happen on either side of the political divide. And I think that it's important, you know, as commentators, as people who are interested in politics, that we continue to advocate for that approach because the polarisation of US politics, it's not unique.
We see it in Europe. We see it to a limited extent in Ireland, fortunately so far. But certainly in other parts of Europe, you know, we have really, really bitterly divided politics. And, you know, it's not good for democracy. It's not good for outcomes. It's not good for citizens. And it's to be condemned wherever it comes from.
OK, Larry, on the broader US and getting back to today's papers, Anton Savage is writing in the Business Post today that Tucker Carlson thinks MAGA is over and that's bad news for Trump because Anton Savage reckons that Tucker Carlson is a good bellwether of where the wind is blowing.
Yeah, absolutely. I think this is a very interesting piece because Anton Savage is by no means paying homage to Tucker Carlson. I think he's pointed pointing out his many flaws. But Carlson has always had a unique capacity to be a step ahead. And if you look at his career in journalism and as a pundit and other related activities, he's always been this sort of step ahead and seen what was coming.
I mean, this is a guy who started off as very much an establishment liberal Republican and has moved with the times. He is now saying that, look at Trump's numbers. The bottom is falling out of them and that MAGA is coming to an end. Okay.
What do you think?
I think that there is fatigue with Donald Trump, the individual. I continue to believe, and this upsets a lot of people, I continue to believe that his brand of conservatism, the way he has remade conservatism in the United States, is a winning political formula in the United States. But Through his own fault, he has pushed way, way too hard on a variety of issues.
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Chapter 8: How does the panel assess the future of political leadership in Ireland?
But to Trump and to MAGA and to the Republicans, they're going to get a hiding of some sort in the midterm elections. But maybe not as badly as other people think, because I'm I'm really beginning to wonder about the capacity of the Democrats to mount a decent campaign.
Well, listen, does it get Fergus does you make an interesting point? The right knows what it's about and is unashamed what it's about. As a lifelong kind of lefty, the left in America and elsewhere, does it have the courage of its convictions anymore?
No, it doesn't. And it doesn't have... The other ingredient that's necessary in a situation like that is charisma. It doesn't have anything like charisma. You only have to look at Chuck Schumer on the television. It's like the definition of anti-charisma. It drives people not to anger, but to sleep. And a lot of the Democrats are like that. But and there is no I mean, the issues are the issues.
Cost of living, state of the economy. Opposition to the war. And there's nobody on the Democratic side putting forward rational and coherent arguments.
Briefly, Larry. Yeah. Well, just, you know, it reflects the reality of the United States as a massive country. That's where the Democrats' difficulty lies there. So it's in terms of the message or in terms of building a coherent message across. Somebody like Zoran Mamdami plays well in New York City. He doesn't play well in Kansas.
So they need to be a big tent and have a coherent overarching message, but at the same time allow for deviation from the party line in order to maximize gains.
Okay. Listen really briefly, Louise, because this will probably be all over our TVs for the next few days.
Katie Balls in the Sunday Times ducking and diving with the Donald so Prince Charles according to this piece the greatest diplomat in the world is sitting alone in a high grove or some estate somewhere and he's crafting amazing speeches that he's going to go out and he's going to fix everything with the Donald
Yeah, God love King Charles. He's heading to the States for a state visit. And they're basically what Katie Bowles is writing in The Sunday Times is that Charles and Camilla are embarking on the trickiest royal tour in decades when they're going to the United States. And, you know, there's a lot to balance. There's the ongoing tetchiness between Donald Trump and Keir Starmer.
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