Cancel the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Trump will be guest of honor at the “nerd prom,” with journalists serving as suck-ups
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is shaping up as one of those rubber chicken types of events.
But when I say “rubber chicken,” I’m not talking about what’s on the dinner plates. I’m talking about journalists with rubbery ethics showing themselves to be chickens by partying with a criminal president.
Donald Trump has agreed to be the guest of honor when the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) holds its annual dinner April 25.
Trump explained on social media why he plans to attend the dinner for the first time as president: “Because the Press was extraordinarily bad to me, FAKE NEWS ALL, right from the beginning of my First Term, I boycotted the event, and never went as Honoree. However, I look forward to being with everyone this year. Hopefully, it will be something very Special.”
Something special alright.
Trump has:
Targeted TV shows for cancellation
Shaken down TV networks for large lawsuit settlements
Helped his rich supporters take over news outlets
Kicked the Associated Press out of briefings for refusing to use the made-up name “Gulf of America”
Attacked female reporters with insults such as “Piggy” and “ugly”
Used regulatory power as a weapon to try to get journalists to cover his Iran war more favorably, and said their failure to do so was “almost treasonous”
Tried to impose oppressive access rules for reporters at the Pentagon – rules that have been rejected twice by a federal judge
Praised a politician for criminally assaulting a reporter
Yet the correspondents’ dinner – sometimes described as a “nerd prom” – is shaping up as an embarrassing embrace of the Trump regime. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly has been invited by CBS to attend the dinner, and other news organizations are struggling with the question of whether to welcome members of the Trump regime to their satellite parties surrounding the dinner.
Some journalists, apparently grasping the fact that the dinner will make them look like toadies, will wear “pocket squares and pins with the words of the First Amendment, in a subversive gesture supporting press freedom,” according to the Status newsletter. The merch, sold by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, will feature a hand-drawn design by CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Those pocket squares will certainly show the fascists. What a crushing blow against the empire.
Even before the MAGA movement came along, the correspondents’ dinner was a terrible idea. Yes, I know – it helps pay for scholarships and education about the 1st Amendment. But it also shows journalists cavorting with the politicians they’re supposed to dispassionately cover. It undermines trust in journalism. It creates the impression that the press and the politicians are in cahoots, performing in a choreographed Washington pageant, and only pretending to be adversaries now and then.
Over the years, the correspondents’ dinner became something of a roast of both politicians and the press. But the snowflakes among the Washington elite grew uneasy when the powerful got skewered.
A memorable kerfuffle came in 2018 when Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, attended and was mocked by comedian Michelle Wolf. Referring both to Sanders’ lies and her makeup, Wolf said the press secretary “burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye.”
The mainstream media rushed to Sanders’ defense. WHCA President Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News said Wolf’s jokes tainted the group’s “unifying message.” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said it was “impressive” that Sanders didn’t walk out.
I don’t know why White House correspondents liked Sanders so much. Anita Kumar of Politico and Francesca Chambers of Dailymail.com held a going-away party for Sanders when she left the press secretary job in 2019. This was two months after the release of the Mueller Report, which included Sanders’ admission that she had lied to the press.
Lately, the WHCA has tried to avoid making people uncomfortable. A departure from that came last year when the group hired comedian Amber Ruffin, a Trump critic, to provide entertainment. But before the event, the WHCA unhired her. The stated reason: “to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division.”
This year, the association is playing it safe with entertainment by Oz Pearlman, a “mentalist” who performs tricks such as mind-reading people’s personal PIN numbers. If only he would read what’s under those suspicious redactions in the Epstein files.
Some people believe the correspondents’ dinner in 2011 accelerated Trump’s quest for power. Then-President Barack Obama spent several minutes mocking Trump, who had questioned whether Obama was a natural-born citizen. Since then, the entire country has been punished for Trump’s humiliation.
But if the WHCA allows Trump to celebrate his taming of the news media, that would be especially humiliating.
And that’s why the correspondents’ association must come to its senses. It could disinvite Trump, or it could simply call off the event. There’s precedent for a cancellation, which happened in 1951 because of “the uncertainty of the world situation.” News reports got no more specific than that, but the announcement coincided with key events in the Korean War.
Now the nation is on war footing again, with Trump threatening to wipe out a “whole civilization” of 93 million people. The WHCA could call off the event because of “the uncertainty of the world situation” and avoid the certainty that its members would be forever remembered as suck-ups to a dictator.
This week’s media atrocity
Republicans are looking at a midterm disaster as they blunder through an illegal war, but Politico’s “Dems in disarray” theme marches on. “Dems’ Iran options run low,” Politico informed us last week.
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White House Transcribers Dinner
I agree they should cancel, but the fact they are not really shows how the media has failed in this time of Trump. Thank you for this article, and for independent media like you.