President Donald Trump, who has had a tense relationship with the press, was never much of a fan of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. During his first term, he skipped out on the annual fundraising gala that has historically sometimes included a comedian poking fun at the Administration, but on Saturday he was attending for the first time as President—before the event was disrupted by a shooting. After the incident, however, Trump is keen on the organization scheduling a do-over.
After a suspect, believed to be targeting the President, who has already faced two previous assassination attempts, opened fire and was apprehended at the event’s security barricades at the Washington Hilton, Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social: “I have recommended that we ‘LET THE SHOW GO ON’ but, will entirely be guided by Law Enforcement. They will make a decision shortly. Regardless of that decision, the evening will be much different than planned, and we’ll just, plain, have to do it again.”
He added in a separate post that he had “spoken with all the representatives in charge of the event, and we will be rescheduling within 30 days.”
In a briefing later that evening to reporters, some still in their dinner attire, Trump again insisted: “We’re going to do it again.”
“We’re not going to let anybody take over our society. We’re not going to cancel things out,” he said of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which is a non-government event hosted by the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA).
“I don’t want to see it be canceled,” Trump reiterated to 60 Minutes on Sunday. “I don’t want to have a crazy person—I think it’s really bad for a crazy person to be able to cancel something like this.”
But it’s unclear if there’s appetite or ability for a rescheduled dinner. CBS News’ Weijia Jiang, the president of the WHCA, acknowledged the President’s remarks after the incident. But in a separate statement posted on social media, she said that the association’s board “will be meeting to assess what happened and determine how to proceed.”
Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich, the WHCA’s treasurer and incoming President, told her network that the organization has not yet “had a moment to sort of coalesce around” how they might carry out the President’s request.
“I am certain she wants to fulfill the President’s wish, to make this happen within 30 days,” Heinrich said of Jiang, whose term ends in July. But “I don’t know the ins and outs of how we could do that,” Heinrich added, noting the extensive planning required to put on the event.
Jiang, speaking to Face the Nation on Sunday, said that Trump had called her into his holding room after the Hilton shooting to explain that he “realized how important that night was.” Jiang added: “He told me that we were not going to be deterred.”
What is the White House Correspondents’ Dinner?
The WHCA has hosted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner almost every year since 1921. On the WHCA’s website, the dinner is described as the organization’s “main source of revenue to finance all of our work, including support of the journalists working to cover the president, events and programs to educate the public about the value of the First Amendment and a free press, and scholarships to help the next generation of journalists.”
Past Presidents who have attended have spoken at such dinners about the importance of a free press. The organization has also historically invited entertainers to the dinner, and this year, they invited mentalist Oz Pearlman.
The dinner has for decades been held at the Washington Hilton hotel, which opened in 1965. Only more than a mile away from the White House, the hotel hosts a number of notable events, including the First Lady’s Luncheon and the National Prayer Breakfast. But it’s also known for being the site of an attempted assassination against former President Ronald Reagan, who was shot on the sidewalk outside the hotel in 1981 after a speaking engagement there with the AFL-CIO.
Questions about security
Restaging the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in such a short timeframe would be an immense logistical challenge, even without newfound security concerns. But after the shooting, questions have grown about what went wrong.
Some attendees have, after the fact, flagged the apparently lax security at the dinner on Saturday. Sen. John Fetterman (D, Pa.) said in a post on X that the Washington Hilton venue “wasn’t built to accommodate an event with the line of succession for the U.S. government.” Kari Lake, former Republican Arizona gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidate and current senior adviser for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, said on social media that she couldn’t believe “how lax the security was,” describing how “nobody asked to visibly INSPECT my ticket nor asked for my photo identification” when she entered.
The House Oversight Committee has since requested a briefing from the U.S. Secret Service over the incident.
The Washington Post reported, citing unnamed officials, that despite the presence of the President, Vice President J.D. Vance, and other high-ranking Administration officials, the dinner was not given top security status that other similar events would have and that would have allowed access to greater security resources.“While this was extraordinarily dangerous and put a lot of lives at risk, and there’s no doubt that that’s something we’re going to have to learn from over the next couple weeks,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Meet the Press on Sunday, “the system worked.”
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