President Donald Trump returned to the stage of the rescheduled White House Correspondents' Association dinner Friday night, delivering a rambling speech that praised some journalists, took potshots at others, made jokes about public figures' weight and intellect, and quipped about a third presidential term.
He assured the crowd of journalists, though, that he'd scrapped the most biting parts of his remarks.
“That was going to be a doozy,” Trump said
about the speech he’d been prepared to give in April, before a gunman upended the original dinner and forced its postponement.
“As I said three months ago, the show must go on,” the president said to begin his remarks, hailing the decision to reschedule the dinner. He referred to “the attempted mass murder” that could have happened that night in April, but then moved largely to humor — and insults.
Trump's return to the correspondents' dinner — and his promise to come back next year as well — represented a notable moment in his relationship with the news media, which he has attacked, sued and taken administrative action against since he took office for his second term early last year. Among the audience members were reporters he had sanctioned and barred from events.
Trump’s sometimes off-color speech, which lasted more than an hour, was full of vague potshots directed at individuals he doesn’t like — from actress Jane Fonda to rock legend Bruce Springsteen to “Barack Hussein Obama.”
Among other targets of Trump’s pointed humor: Late-night talk show hosts Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel; Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; California Gov. Gavin Newsom; former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; and Trump's own speechwriters, whose jokes he sometimes criticized even as he delivered them. Some of the comments flirted with racism.
The president also spent some time expressing pride in the ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, formerly the Trump International Hotel. “It’s great to be back at a place that I know very well because I built it,” Trump said.
Trump also made reference to the journalism awards that had been handed out earlier in the evening, most of them for stories challenging him and his administration. “Do I have a say in those awards?” he asked with a grimace.
He made a brief mention of the Iran war and several remarks about the ballroom he is building at the White House. He also used the occasion to joke about the possibility he would serve a third term — something barred by the U.S. Constitution's 22nd Amendment.
“Just like my presidency, the second time is always better,” the president quipped. “And the third time will be better yet.”
He added: “I’m only kidding.” Then, at the end, he donned a red cap that said “Trump 2028” and delivered the “scoop” that he was running again.
Earlier, Trump had entered the ballroom to polite applause, and was thanked for his support by outgoing White House Correspondents’ Association president Weijia Jiang of CBS News. After dinner, he then sat through more than an hour of awards presentations.
One of the winners, Tyler Pager of the New York Times, was in fact one of the reporters who had been subpoenaed by Trump’s Justice Department over his reporting about Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet. Those subpoenas were withdrawn on Thursday in a New York courtroom — just one of the arenas where the president, in his second term, has been seeking to control media coverage that displeases him.
The rescheduled dinner was taking place at a smaller venue this time that held only about 700 people. Security was markedly tighter. Guests entered via a single entrance, through two ID checks and past a detection dog, armed officers and security guards. There was no red carpet and no separate cocktail receptions preceding the dinner.
“Let’s try this again,” Jiang quipped, welcoming the crowd. The White House press corps, she noted, “always have a follow-up.” Turning serious, she referred back to the trauma and confusion of the original dinner in April.
“Tonight our message is this: We are back,” she said. “We will not be intimidated. We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word.”
Early in his speech, Trump signaled that he had decided to tone it down. But he kept some zingers. Like this one, to the media-heavy audience: “This is really the largest group of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ people put together at one time.”
Besides the pared-down approach, there was another change at Friday’s dinner: two additional awards. One was presented to Victor Gonzales, the Secret Service agent who was staffing a security checkpoint in April and was struck in his protective vest.
Gonzales “placed himself directly in harm’s way and engaged the armed suspect,” Jiang said. “He stayed in the fight and the attacker was stopped.”
A second award was presented to the staff of the Washington Hilton hotel, site of the first dinner, who were hailed for their professionalism under pressure.
The dress code this time was a looser “black tie optional,” and dinner included grilled peach and burrata salad, lobster and beef Wellington. The evening, as at the last dinner, featured entertainment by mentalist Oz Pearlman — who this time got the chance to do his act..
Jiang and her fellow board members had worked hard to bring about this WHCA dinner 2.0, not wanting to let a violent act — or the image of colleagues hiding under tables — remain the final thought. Announcing the rescheduling, she emphasized the dinner’s stated purpose: “A celebration of a free press and the vital role of journalism in our democracy for over a century.”
But it’s also clear that some people felt the dinner should not be rescheduled at all.
Many never thought it was much of a good look in the first place, with the sight of journalists in formal wear cozying up to their sources, or the objects of their reporting.
“It undermines the public faith in how the press does its work, and it makes it look like we are pals with the people we cover,” Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, said when the deliberations were taking place.
The new dinner came during a time of fast-increasing tension between the media and a president who, in his second term, has tried to exert pressure on media outlets he is unhappy with in a variety of ways. That pressure has ranged from sanctions against members of the White House press corps to regulatory actions through the Federal Communications Commission to outright lawsuits. Those tensions have only escalated since April.
Trump, though, ended with an attempt to mend fences — to a point. “I have a lot of respect for your profession,” he told the assembled journalists after an hour of speaking. He also touted his own success, and declared: “When I'm not around, you're all gonna be broke.”
And he concluded about the evening: “I didn't know what to expect. It's far worse than I originally thought.”
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Jocelyn Noveck covers the intersection of media and entertainment for The Associated Press.
