‘Let’s try this again.’ Trump and the media give White House Correspondents’ dinner a bizarre redo.
So on Friday, two of us returned to document the unprecedented dinner redo, its heightened stakes, and the strangeness of an event with the participation of one of the most aggressive presidential administrations toward the press in modern memory.
Gone were the glitzy pre-parties and networking that characterized the spring dinner, replaced by a more subdued, obligatory vibe. The much smaller crowd scanned QR codes and showed IDs before shuffling through the magnetometers that have long been a part of this event.
Instead of a festive, celebrity-ogling atmosphere, there was an air of obligation and trepidation for what the night would bring. But as the night wore on, the crowd relaxed. And as Trump took the stage for his speech, a sense of humor reemerged — along with his usual mix of grievances and insults.
“I am delighted to be here at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Amazing people, a lot of people that I like. I don’t like it all,” Trump said. “But I respect most of them. I must say that you do a great job, an amazing job and it’s an honor. And as I said three months ago, the show must go on.”
He launched into a little over an hour of remarks that were part remembering April’s events, part canned jokes, and part standard, rambling Trump speech filled with criticism of reporters, shots at political rivals and a sales pitch for his new ballroom.
The April dinner loomed over the event, with gallows humor about gathering yet again exchanged in low tones and security filling the space. Outgoing WHCA President Weijia Jiang of CBS News addressed the memory directly as she opened the dinner.
“Good evening everybody, let’s try this again,” Jiang said. “Tonight our message is this: we are back, we will not be intimidated, we refuse to let an act of violence have the last word.”
Trump made small talk on the dais, seated between Jiang and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Cabinet officials and members of Congress were sprinkled throughout the smaller room. And there were odd moments.
What appeared to be an AI James Madison was tasked with delivering the message that the executive branch has tried to limit the rights of the press — an implicit rebuke of the man sitting amongst the WHCA board members at the dais.
A more direct rebuke of the current administration’s treatment of the press came from lifetime achievement awardee Susan Walsh, a retired Associated Press White House photographer.
“To all the journalists out there who are working incredibly hard to report the truth, despite access issues, insults, and subpoenas, keep it up,” Walsh said.
But there were also poignant moments.
The room gave a standing ovation to Secret Service officer Victor Gonzalez, who engaged the would-be assassin in April, sustaining a shot to his bulletproof vest. The WHCA presented him and the staff of the Washington Hilton with service awards.
At the dinner, Trump sat through the presentation of WHCA awards honoring the very journalism and journalists he has publicly criticized. They included Wall Street Journal reporters who revealed a letter and drawing of a naked woman signed by Trump in a birthday album compiled for sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump has sued the news outlet over the story, refiling the defamation lawsuit after a judge tossed his first attempt.
Trump did not applaud for many of the award winners, but he shook each of their hands, smiling and pantomiming shrugs to the audience when the Journal team was presented with theirs.
His mirth continued as CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, emceeing that part of the program, detailed Trump’s lawsuit and how one of the reporters had to relocate her family in the aftermath. Trump later lit into two of them, Kaitlan Collins of CNN and Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal, repeatedly commenting on Collins’s appearance.
Trump’s lengthy speech included a stream of recycled, personal, and at times racist jabs at prominent Democrats. They included familiar remarks about Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s heritage, and a comment that former Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, who dropped out amid sexual assault allegations, might have won anyway because it’s “the age of Trump.”
But Friday was always set to be a bizarre evening.
First, the dinner was moved from the Washington Hilton to the Waldorf Astoria, a downtown hotel that has its own history with Trump. Before it was the Waldorf, it was the Trump International Hotel, an historic building restored by the president’s company before his first term.
Trump couldn’t resist mentioning this fact at the start of his speech.
“It’s great to be back at a place that I know very well because I built it,” Trump quipped, before devoting a substantial portion of his speech to what amounted to an infomercial for the controversial White House ballroom project.
The hotel became a hub of administration social activity and of controversy in Trump’s first term as dignitaries and others seeking favor with his administration would stay there during their visits to Washington.
Since the Trump Organization sold the hotel in 2022, the ballroom has become a staple of the D.C. dinner circuit.
Then there was the rescheduled dinner itself.
From the outset, the event was shaping up to be a more president-centric event than the typical WHCA dinner, which is hosted by the entity that represents the interests of the reporters and outlets who cover the White House.
Though the organization always invites the sitting president – a symbol of the mutual respect between the press and the White House for the important role of journalists in a democracy – this year was the first time in Trump’s two terms that he’d agreed to attend.
In announcing his plans to show up in a Truth Social post in March, Trump had declared (falsely) that he’d be the “honoree.”
First established over 100 years ago, the dinner is designed so White House officials and the press that covers them can sit down and have dinner together on neutral ground and honor exceptional coverage of the White House from the previous year. Awards for hard-hitting journalism and scholarships to aspiring young journalists are always part of the agenda.
But in recent years the dinner has become controversial, criticized as too chummy and a throwback that has little place in the current political environment. The event took on a particularly glitzy aura during the presidency of Barack Obama, who attracted a coterie of celebrity guests to the event, including famously in 2011 – New York real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump.
Trump referenced that infamous evening in his speech, denying that it motivated him to run for president. He said instead, he loved the attention and Obama accurately predicted how he’d renovate the White House —with a giant Trump sign.
This year’s dinner took place in an unusually tense climate for the Washington press corps, as the Trump administration has steadily tested the boundaries of journalistic freedom in his second term.
Early on, his administration upended the longstanding White House press pool rotation process and attempted to remove members of it based on disagreements with their reporting, spurring a legal case that is still pending. Since then, they’ve raided a journalist’s home, subpoenaed them for their sources, and threatened federal broadcast licenses for TV networks with which they disagree.
Just days before the dinner, it was revealed that the White House had subpoenaed New York Time journalists and sought their records over reporting that detailed security concerns about the new Air Force One. Just a day before the dinner, the Justice Department agreed to withdraw the subpoenas after a court hearing in which a judge seemed skeptical of their adherence to proper procedure.
A coalition of former journalists and press freedom groups also applied pressure on the WHCA and journalists in attendance, urging them to use the dinner to stand up to Trump for press freedom.
“When I’m gone, you’re all going to be broke,” Trump predicted near the end of his speech. “It’s been an interesting evening. I didn’t know exactly what to expect. It’s far worse than I thought.”
Tal Kopan can be reached at tal.kopan@globe.com. Follow her @talkopan. Jackie Kucinich can be reached at jackie.kucinich@globe.com. Follow her @JFKucinich and on Instagram at @JackieKucinich.