year after sustained media coverage and sustained campaign by u.s. political candidates and the current administration. and her husband mohammed is in the audience with us tonight also continued to advocate for the release of others and they strongly believe that it was the press coverage in addition to government intervention that shed a spotlight on their situation and helped to build the leverage for their release. welcome home. [ applause ] and of course, we have with us a nice lady michelle wolffe, but more on you later. i would also like to call out all of my fellow board members. john decker, judy pace, john carl, and olivia knox. we will do a terrific job. our new executive director has brought his passion for white house coverage to the job. no one can ever replace julie,
president obama and hillary clinton the other day deserve great credit for that. joining us now, award winning author, nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss, judy pace joins us as well. good to see you. what a white house you ll be covering. michael, it s almost shakespearean and you actually had a double down, mark halperin and john heilemann s last book, they had a scene where barack obama was mocking donald trump at the white house correspondents dinner and trump seething and one joke after another joke after another joke and it was at that moment he was going to run for president of the united states and show all of the people that were laughing at him. he thought about it before. that was the moment. we said, okay, fine, how shakespearean that some jokes at