The cavernous Washington Hilton ballroom for this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was still filled, despite no POTUS on the bill, no comedian, and few administration figures or members of Congress drawing attention in the crowd.
“I’m told that we’re the entertainment for the evening, so this is what you get,” quipped BBC News’ Anthony Zurcher, one of the evening’s honorees.
That the spotlight this year was on award recipients, scholarship winners and a final speech from WHCA President Eugene Daniels is one of the better outcomes for the association, under attack from the Trump White House, determined to marginalize the mainstream media as biased and elitist.
Guests still walked the red carpet to show off their tuxes and downs, and the WHCA even added an additional step and repeat backdrop for the journalism rank and file to get their own Instagram shots.
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But the relative lack of flash helped focus attention on what the WHCA has long argued, that its interests were in access and independent reporting on POTUS without fear or favor. “What we are not is the opposition,” Daniels told the crowd, many of whom stood up in a standing ovation captured on C-SPAN.
Trump, in New York after traveling back from Rome, has so far yet to post about the dinner, as he has in years past.
If he had watched the dinner that he skipped, he would have heard a defense of the WHCA, a rebuke of his characterization of the news media as the “enemy of the people,” and cheers for the news outlet he has tried to ban, the Associated Press.
But he also would have seen awards given to mainstream outlets for their hard-hitting coverage of his nemesis Joe Biden, including an honor given to Axios’ Alex Thompson, whose reporting on the then-president’s cognitive decline “was impacting his ability to do his job,” in the eyes of judges.
“We, myself included, missed a lot of this story, and some people trust us less because of it. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows,” Thompson said. He got some applause. “I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust, and being defensive about them further erodes it.”
Hollywood’s presence was limited. CAA and UTA each held their annual Friday evening receptions, just blocks away from each other in Georgetown, but the celebrity turn out was largely of their news clients.
Last year, Scarlett Johansson, Colin Jost, Chris Hemsworth, Rachel Brosnahan, Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell were in the mix.
There were far fewer boldfaced showbiz names trekking to D.C. this year, putting extra demand on those who were there. Jason Isaacs, coming off a wild season of White Lotus, quipped about taking a break from the non-stop selfie requests at Tammy Haddad’s Garden Brunch. He helped present awards to military first responders to the Army Black Hawk-American Air regional jet crash at Reagan National Airport.
“I get to pretend sometimes to be brave, courageous and selfless, like the men who are about to come up. I also get to pretend to be a privileged elite, a scumbag, like nobody here today, but like people we all know, but I never get the two worlds confused,” he told the crowd.
The MAGA crowd largely avoided traditional parties and instead went to events for Donald Trump Jr.’s launch of a private Executive Branch club and a party hosted by Steve Bannon’s War Room. Only a smattering of Trump administration figures were spotted elsewhere. Dr. Mehmet Oz, now the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was at a fete at the British ambassador’s residence, co-hosted by the Brunswick Group and the Daily Mail, and he attended the brunch.
David Urban, one of Trump’s high-profile defenders, made a point of posing with the person he calls his doppelganger, actor Michael Chiklis, and someone he says gets stopped at airports and wrongly gets blamed for supporting the president. Isaacs and Chiklis were among the contingent representing the Creative Coalition, which has for years had a presence on the weekend, no matter who is in office.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore, at a pre-dinner reception, smiled and laughed a bit when asked about the endorsement of a celebrity who was not there, George Clooney. The star of Broadway’s Good Night, and Good Luck recently told CNN that Moore was “levitating above” all other potential 2028 contenders. The governor, though, pointed out that he has a state reelection race next year.
As low-key and different as the dinner was this year, it should hardly be taken as a signal of its demise in the age of Trump. It’s still D.C.’s top social weekend, and the sheer number of media-sponsored parties and receptions surrounding the main event showed that. At the dinner, the WHCA ran a clip reel of past presidents, going back to Ronald Reagan, entertaining at past events, and it would not be that surprising if Trump eventually gives in to his temptation for the spotlight and shows up.
Less certain is the tradition of hosting a comedian. With its early attacks on Amber Ruffin for her anti-Trump humor, the White House may have done the WHCA a favor, signaling that the Trump team would weaponize the event. Already concerned about the incongruity of having a comic yukking it up with what was happening with the AP and other outlets, the WHCA scrapped her.
Instead, the news out of the dinner has largely been what Daniels said, as he made the case for the Fourth Estate and cited the “intimidation, lawsuits and violence” journalists have been facing.
“We don’t invite presidents of the United States to this because it’s for them,” he said. “We don’t invite them because we want to cozy up to them or curry favor. We don’t only extend invites to the presidents who say they love journalists or who say they are defenders of the First Amendment and a free press. We invite them to remind them that they should be.”
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