Transcript of White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Ukraine hits Russian Retailer, India Protests

Last night in Washington at a rescheduled White House Correspondents' Dinner: "What do we do here?

Is this supposed to be fun? Am I supposed to be serious? Am I supposed to be a comedian?" I'm Ayesha Rascoe. And I'm Scott Simon, and this is Up First from NPR News. Yesterday, the White House said the president's remarks would be, quote, "unifying yet vicious." Well, just how unifying and how vicious?

We'll have a recap.

Also, Ukrainian Drones have hit Russian oil refineries and airfields, and now a new target: Russia's version of Amazon.

Also, a young people's protest movement in India, which began with frustration over entrance exams. What are their demands?

So please stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend.

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In April, after the White House Correspondents' Dinner came to an abrupt end, President Trump characterized his aborted speech as, quote, "a doozy." That dinner was interrupted when a gunman fired shots in the hotel lobby.

And the president and other attendees had to be evacuated.

The dinner was rescheduled for last night, and President Trump made jokes about bulletproof vests and said he was taking a softer tone with the media than he'd planned in his original speech. Oh, that was going to be a doozy. I was so psyched. I was going to rip people, and I don't know, just something changed. It's really for the better, but I just wouldn't want to do that, but we'll do a little ripping if you don't mind. Oh, ripping did the president get. NPR's media correspondent David Falkenflik joins us. David, thanks so much for being with us. Pleasure. Um, let's just say there's often a rift seemingly between the White House and the media. Did they have a civil dinner?

Well, uh, I would say it was civil, but it was pretty surreal.

You heard the president's speech? What do you take from it?

Well, first, let me say there were folks from NPR at the dinner, and I don't speak for NPR on this. I'm talking to you, Scott, as your media critic this morning. I would say from a Trump standpoint, you know, he was there, you know, at the lectern for over an hour, giving a fair amount of one-liners, going after his critics, the people who are his political opponents, the Democrats, potential replacements for the next presidential race, people he sees as enemies, people in the press. You know, and anytime the guy's in front of a microphone, he's going to indulge in these instincts. From my perspective, somebody who thinks about comedy, he sounded a lot like Don Rickles channeled by Christopher Walken. But these were jokes, by and large, that weren't landing. I mean, people were sitting stone-faced in front of it. There wasn't a lot of mirth and laughter that night, even though it's supposed to be a night where, yes, he pokes fun at everybody else, but a president, any president, you know, goes after himself as well in the spirit of acknowledging the press's job is to kind of hold him accountable.

And we should remind ourselves that it wasn't just an occasion for comedy, or maybe, maybe we should phrase that attempts at comedy, because journalism awards were given at the dinner, often for tough coverage of the president and the administration. How did that go?

Well, look, you know, it was, as I said, surreal. You saw The Wall Street Journal being honored for stories breaking revelations of Trump's contribution to a birthday book for the disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein two decades ago. You know, that was the occasion for Trump to personally sue the Wall Street Journal in a multibillion-dollar suit over that story. He kind of grimaced and smirked and nonetheless shook the hands of the reporters. Tyler Pager of the New York Times was honored for his reporting. The Department of Justice was just forced to withdraw subpoena to him and to colleagues for their testimony in front of grand jury over a story that outraged the White House about security concerns within the government over the new air Force One aircraft that was gifted to the president by the Qatari government. You know, this was an extraordinary, uh, juxtaposition of these incredible clash between these two institutions— the New York Times just having prevailed in court and the president's administration.

David, how, how would you characterize relations between Trump and the media?

Well, look, Scott, President Nixon set the tone for what it's like to have a president who's using power to go after the press and threaten and menace the press and intimidate it. President Trump has blown past all of that. And I think if you look at this dinner, it shows the Washington press corps, at least as embodied by the White House Correspondents Association, has shown it hasn't adequately grappled with that. You know, it's at a dinner that's supposed to honor the First Amendment, supposed to honor independent reporting. And in a sense is honoring the president's relationship with the press, which he did give a nod to, but they seem to think it's Washington as usual. And Trump has made sure that it's not. And he knows that it isn't.

NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. David, thanks so much. You bet. There's a new front in the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Online retail. Overnight, Ukrainian drones attacked a facility tied to Russia's equivalent of Amazon, a company called Wildberries. It was the 10th Ukrainian drone strike against Wildberries warehouses this week.

NPR's Charles Maynes joins us now from Moscow. Charles, thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me on the show. Tell us about how these attacks have been going on this week.

Well, starting last Saturday and just about every day since, Ukrainian drones have struck these giant warehouses belonging to Wildberries, causing massive fires to facilities outside of Moscow, outside of Saint Petersburg, in several cities in the south of Russia. The costs have come in lives. At least 9 workers are dead, dozens more injured, several of whom were migrant workers from Central Asia. But of course, there's also material costs. Wildberries is Russia's largest online retailer, and its warehouses are full of goods from small and mid-sized Russian businesses who've taken to social media to say these attacks have caused their financial ruin. So this is just one example. Krill Valov, who runs a small clothing line, sounding rather depressed here as he describes how a third of his product, $150,000 in goods, just went up in smoke in a Wildberries warehouse outside of Moscow.

Well, what can you tell us about Wildberries?

Well, you know, you might have this impression of Russian business as run by oligarchs, gray men in gray suits. Wildberries is about as far as that as you can go. It's really kind remarkable story. It was founded by a woman named Tatiana Kim in 2004. She was a schoolteacher turned stay-at-home mom who started selling hard-to-find quality clothes out of her family's apartment. Now critics will say there's a bit of public relations myth-making going on here. Kim got a bit of money from her then-husband who worked in the IT sector that helped launch the business. But fundamentally, Wildberries is a story of a woman who had an idea that caught on. You know, it's not a business empire handed to her from the spoils of Soviet industry or, say, resource extraction.

How did it become Russia's biggest online retailer? The Wildberries, it doesn't sound like a Russian name.

It is not a very Russian name, Scott. Yeah, you know, Kim chose Wildberries and the company's neon pink WB logo because she thought it sounded positive, progressive, and Western. Kim actually taught English. And in the Russian context, it was an important piece of this brighter, middle-class, consumer-driven future that so many Russians seemed to want and that seemed so within reach as the Russian economy grew in the aughts and beyond. As Kim herself says to the camera in this Wildberries commercial from a few years ago, "What if everyone could choose what they wanted?" And well, a lot of people chose Wildberries, particularly amid the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions that followed. You know, as key Western brands packed up and left, online retail really took over. Little Wildberries distribution points popped up on seemingly every corner, and it's made ordering online deliveries incredibly convenient and preserved a sense a sense of normalcy, I think, for the Russian consumer. It's also made Tatyana Kim rich. Her net worth is around $8 billion with a B. That's making this former schoolteacher Russia's wealthiest woman.

Why do you think Ukraine is attacking Wildberries?

Well, Ukraine says, yeah, Wildberries sells everything, and that includes military hardware. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announcing the first attack on Wildberries last Saturday and saying the warehouses were used to distribute aviation systems and components for drone production, as well as other supplies for the Russian army. And is that true? Well, Tatiana Kim denies it, and so does the Kremlin, which calls the targeting of Wildberry an act of terrorism. What I'll say is this: Wildberry doesn't sell weapons, but it does carry items which might fall into the category of dual-use technology, whether that's civilian toy drones or camouflage hunting gear or electronics whose computer chips could be of some use on the battlefield. And whether that justifies these attacks or not, Kyiv seems to decided that hitting commercial logistics hubs is yet another way to bring the war home to Russians, along with, say, strikes on energy infrastructure. And I think Russians are learning what Ukrainians have known for several years now, that these soft targets are really, really difficult to defend.

NPR's Charles Maynes in Moscow, thanks so much. Thank you, Scott.

In India, Gen Zers, tens of thousands of them, have been demanding the resignation of India's education minister. Today, they got the news they've been waiting for. We have done it! That's the sound of protesters cheering after the minister posted his resignation letter on X.

NPR's Omkar Khandekar joins us now from New Delhi. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you for having me.

Omkar, what started this protest movement?

So for weeks now, Indian youth have been demanding the resignation of its education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan. In May, questions for the entrance exam for India's medical colleges had leaked. This meant more than 2 million aspiring doctors had to retake the exam that they spent years prepping for. Now, such leaks have happened for years. So for many, this was the final straw. Their protests started in early June with a few hundred people at a protest site in central Delhi. But since then, it seems like their number has multiplied every day. In fact, when I went to the Delhi protest site last night, it felt like a carnival. People were out on dates or with their families. They were chanting slogans, making videos for social media. Some wore Batman masks to evade surveillance cameras. And one group had reworked a popular love song to mock the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. So he's saying Modi has robbed the country, Modi has let down the students. And as one poster pointed out, and I quote, they messed with the wrong generation.

Amkar, you said this was the final straw for many of the protesters. What other issues have been fueling their demonstrations?

So on the face of it, this is a protest for educational reforms. But folks also tell me that they are tired of the corruption, unemployment, and the rising cost of living. Now, India has struggled to create jobs even before the Modi government was sworn in 12 years ago. Economist Rosa Abraham says this has been getting worse.

You know, there's this double burden that youngsters are bearing, that even after a degree they're not finding jobs and they're not finding jobs that pay well. How has Modi's government responded to the protests?

Well, first they vilified the protesters. The education minister even compared them to terrorists when they marched to the parliament earlier this week. Security forces attacked them with tear gas, even pellet guns. Now, of course, those scenes were widely shared online, and that triggered protests in other Indian cities. So in his resignation letter today, Education Minister Pradhan said that he did not want the student anger to be exploited by what he called anti-national forces. He did not mention that dozens of students who were injured in the police violence, and he did not apologize for the paper leaks. Amkar, what should we expect next? The protest leaders, they want systemic reforms to prevent exam paper leaks and punishment for the policemen who attacked the protesters. The government has said that its ministers would meet with them today and hear them out, but this is among the rare times that the Modi government has yielded to public pressure. Political analyst Sushant Singh told me that the protesters have achieved something even more remarkable.

The climate of fear, you know, in which a lot of Indians were operating, that you can't criticize Modi, etc., that climate of fear is gone.

He says this crowd cut across caste, class, religion, and language. And that unity, he says, is something India hasn't seen in a long time.

NPR's Omkara Khandekar, thanks so much for being with us. You're welcome, Scott.

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