After a shooting disrupted the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April, President Donald Trump said he would move quickly to reschedule the event.
“I have spoken with all the representatives in charge of the event, and we will be rescheduling within 30 days,” Trump said at a news conference from the White House on April 25.
Though the president missed the 30-day deadline, the dinner is getting a repeat next month. A second dinner has been scheduled for Friday, July 24, in Washington.
In an email to WHCA members shared with The Washington Post, Weijia Jiang, the association’s president, said that she could not let a violent act silence what should have been a celebration of press freedom.
“When gunfire interrupted this year’s event, it further clarified the WHCA’s mission to advocate for the freedoms that are protected in the First Amendment,” Jiang wrote. “We will not allow an act of violence to have the last word, especially during a year when we are reflecting on the 250th anniversary of America and everything we stand for.”
Jiang, a senior White House correspondent for CBS News, said the decision to reschedule “was not automatic” but rather “a choice that the WHCA board made after thoughtful consideration and input from our members.”
The suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, was indicted by a federal grand jury with four felonies including the attempted assassination of Trump.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump called the decision to reschedule the dinner “a very good thing in that we cannot allow Lunatics to change our way of life, or even its scheduling.”
Trump said that Jiang asked him to attend and speak and he accepted. “I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out,” he said. “In any event, it will be a ‘HOT’ ticket!”
While the WHCA did not announce the venue, Trump said it will be at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, which is in the Old Post Office building. The hotel operated as the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C., from 2016 to 2022 when Trump’s real estate company sold the lease to the Miami-based firm CGI Merchant Group. “Interestingly, the location will be The Waldorf Astoria, on Pennsylvania Avenue, a Building and Ballroom that I built,” Trump wrote, concluding his Truth Social post.
The dinner, which was first held in 1921, has attracted criticism from some press advocates who lament cozy mingling between journalists and their powerful sources. That sentiment has been especially salient during Trump’s two presidencies, as he has sued news organizations and derided their journalists as “fake news” and “the enemy of the American people.”
Some critics told The Post in the aftermath of the shooting that they felt the dinner should not be rescheduled — and if it was, that the president should not be featured prominently.
“Why do I need to pay hundreds of dollars and dress up in a tuxedo to go listen to the president of the United States insult my colleagues,” said Steven L. Herman, executive director of the University of Mississippi’s Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation and a former White House bureau chief for Voice of America. “I think he’s made it pretty clear he is not a champion of free speech or the free press. He only likes press or speech when it reflects positively on him.”
Jiang, in her email to members, promised that the rescheduled event will “feature significantly enhanced safety measures and new access procedures.”
She said that since the last dinner, the WHCA has “raised funds to ensure WHCA members who purchased tickets will not have to pay if they attend the second event,” which she called a “more intimate gathering” than the last one, held for hundreds of attendees at the Washington Hilton.
Jiang said the WHCA will offer financial support to students who won scholarships so they can travel back to Washington for the event. “They, along with our journalism award winners, deserve to be recognized for their hard work and dedication to reporting,” she said.
While news organizations typically pay for their own tables at the correspondent’s dinner, some including the New York Times do not participate or buy tables. The Times does, however, send reporters to cover the event.
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