Politics
Trump Set To Skip The White House Correspondent’s Dinner For Fifth Time
In a somewhat unsurprising move, President Donald Trump announced that he will be skipping the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which is scheduled for April 26, for the fifth time in his presidential tenure.
Trump previously declined to attend the event every year in his first term, which did not stop the White House Press Association from hiring anti-Trump headliners to deliver one-sided political attacks. Instead, Trump decided to counter-program the event with the “fake news awards,” which listed a number of the most prominent hoaxes and fake news stories targeting the administration.
The president’s decision to once again skip the event highlights the ongoing back-and-forth between the administration and the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA).
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced in February that the White House would be taking over the pool reporter rotation, which gives the administration the power to decide which reporters will gain access to Trump’s trips and covering pooled-only White House events. The White House has also banned the Associated Press from the White House pool after the outlet refused to go along with Trump’s decision to rename the Gulf of America.
In recent years, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has become synonymous with left-wing activism masquerading in comedy. It is credited by some as a pivotal moment in Trump’s political career, as during the 2011 installment of the annual dinner, then-President Barack Obama mocked Trump, who was in the audience, in a lengthy monologue he concluded with telling the current officeholder that he would never get there.
When Trump opted not to attend, then-headliner Michelle Wolf used the event to amplify numerous hoaxes about the administration, including the “very fine people” hoax and the bogus Russian collusion investigation, despite claiming to poke fun at “both sides.” The event was indistinguishable from a political rally, while Wolf mocked then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders over her accent and physical appearance.
“I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful,” the alleged comedian said. “She burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”
Alleged comedian Michelle Wolf speaks at the 2018 White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Trump’s decision to once again skip the dinner comes after the WHCA axed another anti-Trump comedian, Amber Ruffin, from the headlining slot after she vowed to replicate Wolf’s performance.
Ruffin has a history of deviating from comedy in favor of far-left activism. After Wisconsin teenager Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted for defending himself against violent rioters during the Jacob Blake riots in 2020, Ruffin lashed out at the jury and the “racist” judge overseeing the case in a monologue for her “comedy” show. Throughout the monologue, Ruffin’s voice quivered as she described her “responsibility to say things that people need to know that aren’t being said.”
According to a recent report from the Daily Beast, Ruffin intended to refer to the administration as 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?”
