WASHINGTON, D.C. – Donald Trump, whose political career has been built in part on mocking the American press, will attend his first White House Correspondents’ Dinner as president.
Saturday’s event continues a decades-long tradition dating back to 1921. Still, the black-tie celebration in Washington, D.C., remains a divisive event.
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For years, detractors have argued that Trump’s benevolent approach to the presidency risks obscuring the independence of the press corps.
Trump himself has been one of the critics of the dinner party. Until this year, Trump had refused to attend, poised to defy the tradition in which sitting presidents dine with reporters at least once during the annual event.
Since launching his first presidential campaign, Trump has taken a combative approach to the media, making personal attacks on journalists and filing lawsuits against news organizations for reporting he deems unfair.
His presence at Saturday’s dinner only heightens questions about the event’s role in modern times.
Trump has declined requests to attend five times during his first and second terms. His first visit on Saturday involved a change in the format of the dinner party. Most notably, the long-standing practice of having comedians perform has been scrapped.
Meanwhile, journalists and rights groups called on the event’s organizer, the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), to send a “straight message” to the president about protecting press freedom.
“We also call on the WHCA to reaffirm without equivocation that press freedom is not a partisan issue,” a coalition of organizations including the Association of Professional Journalists wrote in an open letter.
Trump’s return?
Saturday will be the first time Trump has attended a correspondents’ dinner as president, but not the first time he has attended the event.
He attended the 2011 dinner as a civilian, several years before launching his first successful presidential campaign.
At the time, Trump began his foray into national politics, pushing the so-called “natalism” theory, the racist claim that then-President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and forged his U.S. birth certificate.
It is traditional for a sitting president to speak at the event, and President Obama used the opportunity to slam Trump’s conspiracy theories and early political career.
In one instance, President Obama made fun of President Trump’s job hosting the reality show “The Apprentice.”
President Obama mockingly praised Trump’s decision-making, referring to Trump’s “firing” of actor Gary Busey. “Decisions like this keep me up at night,” he joked. “Nice play, sir.”
President Obama also displayed a model of the Trump White House Resort and Casino, imagining what a future President Trump might look like.
Comedian Seth Meyers, who hosted the evening’s event, also took aim at President Trump’s birtherism claims and political ambitions.
“Donald Trump keeps saying he’s running for president as a Republican,” he quipped at one point, “which is surprising because I always thought he was running for president as a joke.”
Mr. Trump sat expressionless in the audience, but several confidants later acknowledged that the night was a major motivator for his 2016 presidential bid.
The White House Correspondents’ Association was founded in 1914 in response to a threat by then-President Woodrow Wilson to abolish presidential news conferences. The organization has worked to expand reporters’ access to the White House.
In the early 1980s, comedians were the star of the annual banquet, and both presidents and journalists were often the subject of their sharp jokes.
Defenders of the event argued that the presence of comedians celebrated free speech and helped discourage black-tie proceedings, emphasizing that no attendee was immune to ridicule.
But that has changed since President Trump refused to attend the first event after taking office in 2017.
Michelle Wolf’s no-holds-barred performance in 2018 is often seen as a breaking point.
In her joke, she brought up Trump’s past comments that appeared to glorify sexual assault and accused him of not having “the backbone to go to the event.” She also mocked mainstream media coverage of the president.
Although praised by fellow comedians and some members of the press, her performance divided opinion among the White House press corps. President Trump and his top officials took particular issue with this content, with the president calling Wolf “filthy.”
The following year, the association instead invited historian Ron Chernow to speak at the event. The dinner would not be attended by another comedian until 2022 under President Joe Biden’s administration.
Last year, during Trump’s first term as president, the association abruptly canceled a scheduled performance by comedian Amber Ruffin, with then-board president Eugene Daniels saying he wanted to avoid “the politics of divisiveness.”
This year, the comedian will be replaced by The Mentalist Oz Perlman.
demand freedom of the press
Those groups include the Society of Professional Journalists, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and the National Association of Black Journalists, and hundreds of individual journalists are using the event to encourage their colleagues to make a statement.
In an open letter, he said the Trump administration’s actions “represent the most systematic and comprehensive attack on press freedom by a sitting American president.”
The group pointed to a series of hostile actions taken by the Trump administration against journalists.
These include restrictions on the White House and Pentagon press pools, Federal Communications Commission threats against broadcasters, immigration enforcement against non-national journalists, and FBI raids on the homes of Washington Post reporters.
The letter also pointed out that the White House had created a “Hall of Shame” page on its website listing media outlets accused of biased reporting, and that Trump had repeatedly verbally abused reporters.
But the Trump administration denies allegations that it treats journalists unfairly or impedes the public’s access to information.
For example, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt regularly touts Trump as the “most transparent” president in American history, citing Trump’s regular media events as an example.
During his second term, President Trump also accepted random phone interviews from reporters, even in the midst of the U.S.-Israel war in Iran.
Journalists and professional organizations noted in the letter that some attendees Saturday planned to wear pocket squares or lapel pins with “First Amendment” written on them.
The pin references provisions in the U.S. Constitution that protect freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
But the journalists called on the White House Correspondents Association to go further and make clear that it is not “normalizing” President Trump’s actions, but “instead fighting back against officials who have waged a systematic war against journalists praised at dinner parties.”
