President Trump appeared at the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, which took place in Washington, D.C. on Friday with a new location and a drastically reduced list of attendees, following the cancellation of the event in April after a gunman fired shots as the event was underway.
Moved to the Waldorf, Astoria, in the nation’s capital instead of the Washington Hilton and reduced from 2,600 guests down to around 680, it was less a star-studded event that each year sees celebrity guests brush elbows with reporters and editors as they sit with the politicians they cover — the optics of which are criticized each year by journalists and critics alike.
For the make-up dinner, the WHCA is also bringing back the Secret Service member who survived the April shooting, when 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, who allegedly intended to target multiple Trump administration officials, was arrested near the screening area outside the banquet hall after running past the security checkpoint. Plus honoring the Washington Hilton staff who stayed on the scene and continued tending to rattled guests.
Elements of the first dinner remained. The awards were handed out; mentalist Oz Pearlman, who got just one private trick for the White House press secretary at the first dinner before gunshots caused chaos, returned to deliver some levity; and ahead of the event, a group of hundreds of former journalists and press freedom groups sent a letter to the WHCA. Now, they were urging the association to capitalize on Trump’s attendance by calling him out for his administration’s attacks on First Amendment rights, which include recently subpoenaing New York Times reporters over their coverage and threatening to revoke licenses of broadcasters.
