The White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an annual gathering of politicians and reporters, has been rescheduled to July 24, following an attack on its originally scheduled date.
The event was originally meant to unfold on April 25. But the dinner was disrupted when a suspect, Thomas Cole Allen, rushed the security checkpoint leading to the venue, in an apparent attempt to attack the officials inside.
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There was an exchange of gunfire, and the suspect and a security officer were injured, though not severely. Neither suffered penetrating bullet wounds, though one round lodged in the officer’s bulletproof vest.
Government leaders in attendance, including United States President Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump, were evacuated by the Secret Service, and the event was cancelled.
But on Tuesday, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and Trump both confirmed the event would proceed on a new date.
“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,” said association president Weijia Jiang, a reporter for CBS News.
Trump echoed her announcement on social media, where he called the rescheduling “a sign of Strength and Fortitude”.
“This announcement is a very good thing in that we cannot allow Lunatics to change our way of life, or even its scheduling,” Trump wrote, confirming he had accepted his invitation.
He then proceeded to hint that he was weighing whether to deliver the same speech he had planned for the April dinner, which was expected to include invective against journalism.
“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,” Trump said. “In any event, it will be a ‘HOT’ ticket!”
The Republican leader has historically had a hostile relationship with the news media, and his experiences with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner have been fraught.
In 2011, for instance, Trump attended as a guest, where he was lambasted by then-President Barack Obama and comedian Seth Meyers.
The speakers joked about his reality TV fame and his embrace of the “birther” conspiracy, which falsely asserted that Obama was not born in the US.
Trump had been floating a run for the presidency at the time, prompting Meyers to quip, “Donald Trump has been saying he will run for president as a Republican, which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke.”
Several years later, in 2015, Trump launched his first successful presidential bid, ultimately winning against Democrat Hillary Clinton the following year.
That was the last time Trump attended the century-old event, until this year.
In announcing that he would attend April’s dinner, Trump revisited some of his grievances with the news media, writing, “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.”
He added that his attendance — as “one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country” — would make the event “the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER, OF ANY KIND, EVER!”
This year’s dinner notably lacked a comedian as entertainment, a tradition that began in 1983. Instead, Oz Pearlman, a mentalist, was slated to perform.
Since the attempted attack in April, Trump has pointed to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as evidence that he needs to build a White House ballroom, where he could hold events.
He has repeatedly claimed that a ballroom is a necessary addition to the White House for security purposes.
Press freedom groups have also been critical of the dinner, warning that it would give Trump a podium to berate reporters.
While Trump holds regular media events, his administration has also restricted government access to reporters, most recently by designating the Pentagon’s press office a classified space, effectively barring entry.
He has also threatened reporters with treason charges and repeatedly called the news media the “enemy of the people”.
Ahead of April’s dinner, press freedom groups warned not to use the occasion to “normalise” Trump’s attacks on reporters.
“The collective weight” of the Trump administration’s actions, the groups wrote in a letter, represents “the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom of the press by a sitting American president”.
According to Trump, the upcoming dinner will take place at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, DC, a property Trump once owned and developed.
