welcome. it s great to see you. if you are sticking with us, we are thankful for that. i am coming to you live from washington, d.c., today. in just a couple of hours, the president will travel from the white house to the white house correspondents dinner. and annual tradition in full swing tonight. just days after announcing his reelection bid, the president will take good-natured aim at those who cover him every single day. more on that ahead. also coming up this hour, a big political fight between the white house and republicans on capitol hill over the debt limit. we re going to look at the potential impact on your family if the gop gets its way, but we are also following breaking news out of texas. where an eight year old and four other people are dead after yet again another mass shooting in this country. and the gunman, remaining at large. everybody that was shot was shot from the neck, execution style. the my understanding is that the victims came over to the friend
From our perspective as members of the press, but also from this white house and members of it. we know that this is going to be the first time since 2016 that both the president and vice president are going to attend this event together. and as you know, this is the one night a year where thousands of journalists, entertainers, politicians are all able to put their politics aside, sit under one roof, and really think about the importance of the freedom of the press, and that is what s going to be the main focus of president biden s speech, according to white house officials, who say he is going to talk about and highlight how that freedom has been threatened and been under attack for sometime now. of course, this speech, this event coming one month after wall street journal correspondent evan gershkovich was arrested in russia for espionage charges. we know that the u.s. is working in coordination with russia to try to get him released, they have established that he s been wrongfully
Family will be in attendance at this event tonight, including the family of austin tice who s freelance who hasn t been heard from since he was kidnapped in syria in 2012. we expect his family to attend as well. all see wnba star brittney griner and her wife, we know that she was detained in russia for nearly a year until that prisoner agreed to between the u.s. and russia. so definitely heavyweight to the topic of this event, but that will be balanced as you heard with roy wood junior there. that ll be balanced by some committee. we expect some great jokes from him tonight, as well as the president, because we ve seen throughout the decades that this event has been going on, some pretty good self deprecating jokes from presidents as they ve given their speeches at these events. let s hope for the committee. that s why we re there. that s why we ve come. real quick, do you know if the president kind of rehearses beforehand the speech that he is going to be delivering? it s all ab