When attendees walk through the doors of Washington’s Waldorf Astoria hotel on Friday for the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, they’ll encounter stricter security measures, fewer guests, and a more subdued atmosphere than originally planned.
Those are adjustments the correspondents’ association has the power to make. What remains beyond their control is what the evening’s most notable guest — President Donald Trump — intends to do once he takes the stage.
Call it a do-over, a second attempt, or, as Trump himself put it, a “HOT ticket.” The central question hanging over the event is whether the president will unleash the sharp remarks he described as “rather nasty” that he had prepared for the original April dinner — the one that ended abruptly when a gunman breached a security checkpoint and the room had to be cleared.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Trump’s attendance Thursday and offered a preview of his mood heading into the evening. “The president looks forward to finishing what he started,” she said. “I encourage everyone watching tomorrow night to tune in for what promises to be a very entertaining and memorable evening.”
Trump himself was less definitive last month, writing on his Truth Social platform: “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. In any event, it will be a ‘HOT’ ticket!”
Friday’s dinner will differ from the original in another way as well — two new awards will be presented. The first will go to Victor Gonzales, the Secret Service agent who was working at a security checkpoint during the April incident and was struck in his protective vest.
WHCA president Weijia Jiang paid tribute to Gonzales in a statement, saying: “Officer Gonzales … ran toward danger so that thousands of others could make it home safely. His courage stemmed from a dedication to service, which we are looking forward to honoring this week.”
A second award will be given to the staff of the Washington Hilton hotel, where the original dinner was held.
Jiang and the WHCA board pushed hard to hold a second dinner, determined not to let a violent incident be the lasting memory of the event. When the rescheduling was announced, she framed it as a matter of principle, describing the dinner as “a celebration of a free press and the vital role of journalism in our democracy for over a century.”
“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 said.
Not everyone agrees the dinner should have been rescheduled. Critics have long questioned whether the event sends the wrong message — images of journalists in formal attire mingling with the very officials and figures they are supposed to hold accountable have never sat well with some in the industry.
“It undermines the public faith in how the press does its work, and it makes it look like we are pals with the people we cover,” said Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, speaking during the deliberations over whether to reschedule.
The dinner is also taking place against a backdrop of growing friction between the press and the president. During his second term, Trump has pursued various means of pressuring media outlets he disapproves of, including sanctions against White House press corps members, regulatory moves through the Federal Communications Commission, and lawsuits.
Those tensions flared again Thursday in a New York courtroom, where a federal judge criticized the government for sloppy legal work. The government subsequently withdrew subpoenas that would have required three New York Times reporters to reveal their sources for stories about a Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet.
That development added fuel to a letter already circulating from a coalition of press freedom organizations and hundreds of former journalists, calling on the WHCA to take a firm stand against the administration at the dinner.
“We believe it is hypocritical to celebrate the First Amendment in front of the man who relentlessly attacks it,” the letter states. “We urge the WHCA to condemn the administration’s actions from the podium and pledge to fight all attempts by his administration to undermine this core pillar of a functioning democracy.”
