President Donald Trump quickly used Saturday’s failed assassination attempt to justify his long-desired White House ballroom, but a conservative commentator knocked down his plans as a “bad idea.”
A gunman attempted to charge into a hotel ballroom during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, and the 79-year-old president argued afterward that the thwarted attempt on his life showed why the ballroom was necessary to host the annual event, but Washington Post columnist Jim Geraghty argued his plan was impractical and unnecessary.
“This is a bad idea, for several reasons,” Geraghty wrote.
“First, in a typical year for the WHCA dinner, attendance runs up to 2,600, a number the ballroom at the Washington Hilton can accommodate,” he added. “The White House ballroom under construction was initially said to seat 650 people, but in October, Trump said the room would be able to seat 999 attendees. Attendance at the WHCA dinner would have to be cut by more 60 percent if the capacity is on the high end of the estimate, by three-quarters if it is at the low end.”
The WHCA is a private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and while some spaces operated by the federal government can be rented out in some circumstances, the White House has never been among those available for private events, and Geraghty said opening the door to one organization will lead others wanting the same opportunity.
“Some contend that journalists dressing up in fancy clothes and drinking and dining with administration officials undermines that independence, a complaint I find overwrought,” Geraghty wrote. “But once this takes place at the president’s house or in the adjacent ballroom, it’s a different story. The president can always be a welcome guest at an event celebrating an independent press, but he should not be the de facto host.”
Geraghty, who’s also the National Review’s senior political correspondent, noted the irony of Trump, of all people, seeking to host a White House dinner celebrating press freedom as he and his administration threaten crackdowns on journalistic independence.
“If Trump or some future president wants to host his own separate White House event celebrating the First Amendment or the people who cover the administration — great,” Geraghty wrote. “But if the WHCA moves its annual dinner to the White House — particularly to a ballroom not authorized by Congress, built with a fundraising contract kept secret until a judge ordered it released, seen by many as a narcissistic president’s monument to himself — it won’t be perceived as merely acquiescing to unpleasant but real security concerns. It will be perceived as acquiescing to the president himself.”
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