For years, the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was the annual ritual President Donald Trump refused to attend — a symbol, in his telling, of a press corps he believed had treated him unfairly from the start.
That will change this spring.
Trump announced Monday that he will attend this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, marking the first time he will participate in the event as president. During his first term, he boycotted the annual gathering entirely. He also skipped the dinner in the opening year of his second term, citing what he described as relentlessly hostile coverage.
Now, he says, he is ready to return.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump explained his earlier absence and his decision to accept the invitation this time: “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.”
Other accounts indicate the president framed his acceptance in more celebratory terms, noting that the invitation was extended “very nicely” and invoking the dinner’s history dating back to 1924 under President Calvin Coolidge. Trump has suggested he intends to make the evening memorable, linking it to the nation’s approaching 250th anniversary and portraying the event as an opportunity to mark the occasion in grand fashion.
The White House Correspondents’ Association welcomed the announcement, according to reports. Association president Weijia Jiang said in a statement: “We’re happy the president has accepted our invitation and look forward to hosting him.” She added, “For more than 100 years, the journalists of the White House Correspondents’ Association have enjoyed an evening with the president, a dinner that celebrates the First Amendment while supporting the work we do including awards honoring excellent journalism and scholarships to help the next generation of reporters who someday will be the ones asking the questions at the White House.”
The dinner, an annual tradition since 1921, with the first presidential attendance by Coolidge in 1924, is scheduled for April 25 at the Washington Hilton. It typically features a comedian as headliner, though this year’s entertainment will be mentalist Oz Pearlman.
Trump has attended the dinner in the past, though not while serving as president. He was notably in the room during Barack Obama’s administration in 2011, when he became the subject of pointed jokes from the dais — a moment many observers later cited as emblematic of his fraught relationship with the Washington press establishment.
The roast is allegedly what convinced Trump to run for president, something, no doubt, Obama now regrets.
Trump’s relationship with the press remains strained. In recent years, Trump has filed lawsuits against several major news organizations, including the BBC, CBS, ABC, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Des Moines Register, with some cases resulting in settlements. Last year, the White House also moved to assert greater control over the press pool, stepping away from the Correspondents’ Association’s traditional role in coordinating coverage. The association operates independently from the administration.
