STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
People attending the White House Correspondents' dinner on Saturday night included our own Michel Martin, who's on the line. Michel, good morning.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning.
INSKEEP: What was that experience like?
MARTIN: Well, I can say that there was already sort of an air of apprehension among, I think, many people. There were a lot of demonstrators outside. There have been in previous years, too. But there was also that sort of attitude, you know, atmosphere of kind of screaming and yelling at people for attending the dinner. That's sort of one thing.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
MARTIN: But there was also this question of what's the president going to say because it was assumed that he was going to give a speech excoriating, you know, the press. And it's one thing to hear him sort of be insulting to a person one-on-one in an interview that you are not a part of, but then to have to sit there and listen to it, there was already a little bit of apprehension about it. And as to the event itself, I mean, I think it's everything you've already heard.
I mean, depending on where you sat in the ballroom, it wasn't clear what was going on. If you were sitting closer to the back and if you understood what gunshots sounded like, then you immediately knew those were gunshots. If you were sitting closer to the front, as I was, it wasn't clean, like the president said in his remarks. It wasn't clear what was going on until there was this mad scramble by law enforcement by - to evacuate first, you know, the dais and then to sort of get control of the situation. And then after that, it just became very quiet.
INSKEEP: I feel that we have reached a point in history here where an event like this is shocking but not surprising.
MARTIN: I think that's fair. I know a lot of people have characterized the scene as chaotic. I didn't experience it that way. And I think part of the reason is that many people in that room - they've either experienced conflict situations, they've been trained for hazardous-environment situations, or they've experienced, you know, violence themselves or they've covered it. I'm just thinking about in the last few years, I've covered the Pulse nightclub shooting. I covered the shooting at Walmart. I covered the shooting the following morning in Dayton.
And so I just think that a lot of people were prepared for the possibility that something like this might happen and kind of kicked into gear, as it were, which is one reason I don't think there was the kind of panic that many people might've expected. I did not hear any screaming or crying. Obviously, it was upsetting. But, sadly or not, I think a lot of people were prepared for something like this.
INSKEEP: You walked out of that dinner and had an opportunity over the rest of the weekend to reflect on what this means. What it says about the country, what it says about our politics, what it says about guns, anything else. What thoughts are on your mind, Michel?
MARTIN: Well, I was thinking about the fact that the president was very complimentary of his security detail, who protected him, who protected his wife and all the other dais guests, as well as, you know, all the other guests in the ballroom. And rightly so. I mean, I remember that, you know, they weren't asking, you know, who you voted for when they were trying to secure the ballroom. But I also have to remember that the president pardoned all of the people who were involved in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, including the people who injured 140 law enforcement officers. And I'm also thinking about the fact that, you know, there are people who are making excuses or defending the person who, you know, murdered a health insurance official last year.
And so it just makes me think about the fact that, you know, in the moment itself, in the ballroom itself, there was this kind of feeling of unity around a shared experience. People were very sort of protective of each other. Everybody was asking, you know, like, are you OK? Are you OK? But in the aftermath, it seems that our attitude about this kind of violence seems to separate based on who you agree with or what your politics are. And so it makes me wonder when or, you know, how we get back to some shared sense of understanding about what is the right way and what's the wrong way to address differences between us. And that's, I guess, the question that I have going forward.
INSKEEP: And how we think about political violence. Michel, thank you so much.
MARTIN: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's Michel Martin, cohost of MORNING EDITION, among our colleagues in attendance at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.
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