President Donald Trump has declared that he will not attend the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 26.
Trump had declined to attend the event every year during his first term, but that did not prevent the White House Press Association from recruiting anti-Trump figures to offer biased political comments. Instead, Trump chose to counter-program the event with the “fake news awards,” which included a list of the most significant hoaxes and false news stories about the government.
The president’s decision to forgo the luncheon underlines the ongoing conflict between the administration and the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA).
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated in February that the White House would take over the pool reporter rotation, giving the administration the authority to choose which reporters will be granted access to Trump’s trips and cover pooled-only White House events.
The White House has also barred the Associated Press from using the pool after the media refused to support Trump’s plan to rename the Gulf of America.
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been associated with left-wing activism masquerading as comedy in recent years.
Some consider it a watershed point in Trump’s political career, as during the 2011 annual dinner, then-President Barack Obama insulted Trump, who was in the audience, in a lengthy monologue that concluded with a warning to the incumbent officeholder that he would never get there.
Trump’s decision to boycott the event comes after the WHCA removed another anti-Trump comic, Amber Ruffin, from the headliner slot after she promised to mimic Wolf’s performance.
Ruffin has a history of shifting from comedy to far-left activism. After Wisconsin teenager Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of defending himself against violent rioters during the Jacob Blake riots in 2020, Ruffin slammed the jury and the “racist” judge supervising the case in a monologue for her “comedy” program. Ruffin’s voice quivered throughout her monologue as she described her “responsibility to say things that people need to know but aren’t being said.”
According to a recent Daily Beast report, Ruffin planned to call the government a “bunch of murderers.”
“This year’s @whca dinner will be hosted by a 2nd rate comedian who is previewing the event by calling this administration ‘murderers’ who want to “feel like human beings, but they shouldn’t get to feel that way, because you’re not,” a Trump Administration official said in a social media post earlier this year. “What kind of responsible, sensible journalist would attend something like this? More importantly, what kind of company would sponsor such as hate-filled and violence-inspiring event?”
Other high-profile officials of Trump’s cabinet, including White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, have declined to attend the annual event.
“This is a group of journalists who’ve been covering the White House for decades,” Leavitt told former White House press secretary Sean Spicer on his podcast last month. “They started this organization because the presidents at the time were not doing enough press conferences. I don’t think we have that problem anymore under this president.”
