President Donald Trump addressed a crowd of reporters Friday night at a writers' dinner that was rescheduled from April after the shooting pushed back the original schedule. Said the president: “As I said three months ago, the program must continue.”
Trump entered the ballroom to a standing ovation, and was thanked for his support by White House Correspondents' Association president Weijia Jiang of CBS News. After dinner, he then stayed for more than an hour for the awards presentations – including many of the journalists who have done direct coverage of him and his management over the past year.
“Let's try this again,” Jiang said with a laugh, welcoming the crowd. The White House press corps, he noted, “always has a follow-up.” Flustered, he flashed back to the trauma and confusion of the first dinner in April.
“Tonight our message is: We are back,” he said. “We will not be afraid. We refuse to let the act of violence have the last word.”
The rescheduled dinner took place in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, a small venue that seats only about 700 people. Visitors entered through a single entrance, past two IDs and past a sight dog, armed police and security guards. There was no red carpet and no separate pre-dinner drinks receptions.
He was expected to deliver some fighting words – “really bad,” he said – against the media he had planned to present in April before the event descended into chaos when a gunman stormed a security checkpoint, forcing people to leave the room. But at the start of his speech, Trump indicated that he had scrapped his planned remarks and would present a mix of items.
“This is the largest group of 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' put together at one time,” the president said.
Trump has always been shy about what to say
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As for Trump himself, he revealed last month that he was not sure. “I don't know if I'm going to make bad statements or not, at least as they affect certain people, but we'll find out soon,” the Republican president wrote on his Truth Social forum. “Either way, it's going to be a 'HOT' ticket!”
Aside from the elimination method, there was one change at Friday's dinner: two more awards. One was presented by Victor Gonzales, a Secret Service agent who was working at a security checkpoint in April and was struck by his protective vest.
“Officer Gonzales … ran into danger so that thousands of others could get home safely,” Weijia Jiang, president of the WHCA, said in a statement. “His courage comes from dedication to work, which we look forward to being honored this week.”
The second prize was to be presented to the staff of the Washington Hilton Hotel, the venue of the first dinner.
The dress code this time was looser “black tie optional,” and dinner included grilled peach salad with burrata, lobster and beef Wellington. In the evening, as at the last dinner, there was entertainment by Oz Pearlman, as well as award presentations and speeches by Trump.
Jiang and his fellow board members worked hard to deliver this WHCA 2.0 dinner, not wanting to let the act of violence — or the image of their colleagues hiding under the tables — remain an afterthought. Announcing the reorganization, he emphasized the dinner's stated purpose: “a celebration of free journalism and the vital role journalism has played in our democracy for more than a century.”
“We cannot allow an act of violence to have the last word, especially during a year when we are thinking about America's 250th anniversary and all that it stands for,” Jiang said.
There is still a lot of criticism of the event
But it is also clear that some people felt that dinner should not be postponed at all.
Many never thought it was a good look in the first place, when they saw journalists wearing formal clothes that matched their sources, or the things they were reporting on.
“It undermines the public's faith in the way the media does its job, and it makes it look like we're friends with the people we're covering,” said Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, as the talks continued.
The new dinner comes at a time of heightened tension between the media and the president, who has tried to put pressure on the media he is unhappy with in various ways. That pressure ranges from sanctions against members of the White House press corps to regulatory actions by the Federal Communications Commission to outright lawsuits.
That dispute has grown since April, with the latest case reaching a New York court on Thursday. There, criticized by a federal judge for sloppy legal work, the government withdrew subpoenas that would have forced three New York Times reporters to testify about their sources for articles about Trump's Air Force One flight.
That outburst prompted a letter from a coalition of press freedom groups and hundreds of former journalists, urging the WHCA to take a hard line against Trump at the dinner.
“We believe it is hypocritical to celebrate the First Amendment in front of a man who relentlessly attacks us,” the letter said. “We urge the WHCA to condemn the administration's actions on the platform and pledge to fight all attempts by his administration to undermine this pillar of a functioning democracy.”
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