On The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone discusses right-wing media's reaction to the White House Correspondents Dinner
Carusone: “It was weird and unsettling the way they immediately jumped into this ballroom thing.”
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From the April 27, 2026, edition of MS NOW's The Weeknight
MICHAEL STEELE (CO-HOST): I want to set a top line because I think it's important to sort of get a vibe from all the storylines that Symone put on the table, the animation, the driving, the voices that sort of push out the narrative on the ballroom and push out the narrative on Democrats, you know, are the cause of all of this with their hot rhetoric. What did you hear from the moments immediately after the events through coming on tonight from this ecosystem that has been driving a lot of these storylines?
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): So, there's one segment which is, you know, obviously Trump's opponents that there's no trust there. So, they're going to look at this and say something doesn't smell right here and they're going to weave conspiracies. But I think your question is actually the operative one, which is there's the difference between something happening in a scattered way organically and then something that is coordinated and a narrative engine because that tells us, one, what their power is, what their potential power is. And then more importantly, as we get closer to the election, what this thing could do when it comes to sort of the landscape, the electoral results.
And then what do we see is a few things. One, he's still the pied piper. He can still control a very large part of that ecosystem, even if there's criticism and frustration. And there is, there's plenty of cracks and fault lines, and they're not willing to carry a ton of water day to day. But for these catalyzing events, he's still the tallest tree in the field. And that's just the reality of it. And I don't need to give all the data to back it up. But that opening segment was very cringey and uncomfortable to watch. It was weird and unsettling the way they immediately jumped into this ballroom thing. It wasn't just officials saying that. That was echoed all throughout right-wing media by these right-wing media figures, even when their audiences weren't there.
If you listen to Megyn Kelly, her people calling in today were saying Trump needs to tone down his rhetoric. So, they were stepping out of line with their own people to carry water for something like this. So, that's one piece. And then the second is, and that's where I think it's significant, what's different between now and 10 years ago is that it would have been one storyline. Now, they picked up a few threads and they're all willing to carry it at the same time, which is sort of this flood the zone strategy. They've developed a lot of muscle memory there.
So, one is build a ballroom. Two is let's start using this as a cudgel to get the media in line and get Democrats in line. Make the media ask Democrats about their rhetoric. And it's not just their rhetoric. They mean don't criticize them anymore. Tone it down. Be careful what you say. And that means you can't speak truth sometimes. They were criticizing people for saying truthful things because somehow the conclusion is very bad. Well, that's what happens when you do bad things. It's going to sound pretty ugly. So that's the -- to me, the big through line is still the tallest tree and their new strategy and it's coordinated -- there is an engine behind it. It still can rev up every so often. And it's not a totally broken machine. That's the lesson that I saw.