On Friday night, hundreds of journalists, dignitaries, and members of the Trump administration gathered in Washington for a do-over of the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner. The smaller, heavily-guarded affair held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel—formerly the Trump International hotel—came in the wake of the attempted shooting on April's dinner, fundamentally altering one of Washington’s most enduring rituals.
The do-over soirée in celebration of the First Amendment got off to a strong start with Wolf Blitzer presenting the Katharine Graham Award for Courage and Accountability to a group of Wall Street Journal reporters for their investigative reporting on an obscene birthday card Donald Trump signed for notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
As Trump sat stone faced on stage and shook his head, Blitzer hailed the journalists for their reporting, noting that the Emma Tucker-led paper had published the story despite Trump's threats and later $20 billion lawsuit that was tossed by a judge. As is custom, the journalists then appeared on stage to receive their award and shook hands with the president, an incredibly awkward moment captured on video that prompted Trump to throw his hands in the air in bemusement.
But the evening’s veneer of civility quickly ended as Trump, the correspondents’ association’s guest of honor, delivered a keynote address laced with vile invective, using the stage to attack the journalists gathered in the room and his political enemies alike. Over the course of more than an hour, Trump offered a meandering and cringe-worthy speech that devolved into a barrage of personal insults and crude attacks, stripping away any pretense that the evening would serve as a celebration of the First Amendment.
“This is the largest gathering of people with Trump derangement syndrome,” he told the room.
Trump went on to repeatedly assail the “fake news” media, mocked the “failing New York Times,” derided CNN’s Kaitlan Collins with a vulgar personal attack, slammed The WSJ's Josh Dawsey, resurrected old insults for Gavin Newsom, Elizabeth Warren, and Chris Christie, called J.B. Pritzker a "fat pig," demanded Rep. Ilhan Omar “get out of our country,” trashed Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and Stephen Colbert as "terrible" and "sick people," and told the journalists gathered, “When I’m gone. You’re all going to be broke. Your business model is going to be finished."
The room, which had applauded The WSJ reporters just moments earlier, responded largely with hushed silence as Trump delivered one attack after another, culminating with him putting on a red “Trump 2028” hat and claiming that he would win a fourth term, effectively turning the dinner into a Trump rally, with his infamous torrent of unhinged trolling, grievances, and conspiracy theories.
The result was a public humiliation for the White House Correspondents’ Association. After months of insisting the dinner was worth reviving in the name of the First Amendment and civil discourse, the Weijia Jiang-led organization instead handed Trump a nationally televised platform to demean the very journalists it exists to represent. Far from showcasing the importance of a free press, the evening left the association looking naïve about its decision to invite the man who has spent years using both his personal and government means to wage war against the free press and its ability to report on his actions.
The address prompted CNN, which aired Trump’s remarks live, to run not one but two full-screen graphics afterward defending Collins and the network’s reporting against Trump’s outrageous broadsides. And while the room was largely silent as Trump rattled off his smears and meandered through tangents about his White House ballroom project and the Waldorf’s chandeliers, no one appeared to walk out in protest over his grotesque remarks.
In fact, as Trump concluded his vitriolic speech, he was met with applause from roughly half the room, reporters there said, before turning toward new WHCA president Jacqui Heinrich, who smiled, cheered, and embraced the man who had just spent more than an hour assailing the work of those seated before him.
If there’s one thing Trump got right Friday night, it was his own assessment of what the evening had become.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” he told the crowd as he concluded. “It’s far worse than I originally thought.”
