Donald Trump to Skip 2017 Correspondents’ Dinner
The President’s continued war against the media
By Emily Ficker
The Progressive Teen Staff Writer
ON MAY 7, 1921, 50 JOURNALISTS GATHERED at the Arlington Hotel in D.C. to celebrate the revival of the abandoned White House press conference, unknowingly initiating the first-ever White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Just a century later, the beloved Washington tradition (and presidential roast) draws thousands of journalists and celebrities, as well as a national audience.
In the form of a tweet, President Trump informed the public that he will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner scheduled for April 29. Mr. Trump is the first sitting President to break the tradition since 1981, when Ronald Reagan was recuperating from an assassination attempt. The tweet did not suggest why Mr. Trump will not attend, but many think it has much to do with Trump’s ongoing feud with his “opposition party” — the press.
Some have even speculated that Mr. Trump is still traumatized from the 2011 Correspondents’ Dinner, where he was the subject of roasts from comedian Seth Meyers and none other than President Obama. For five consecutive minutes, Obama directed at zingers Trump, seeming to rejoice in roasting the front-runner of the “birther movement.”
However, what might have of hit Mr. Trump the hardest was the surge of laughter that followed, “All kidding aside, we obviously all know about [Donald Trump’s] credentials and breadth of experience [to lead a nation]” — ouch.
Could Donald Trump’s absence — or presidency, in and of itself — be a response to that ruthless, traumatizing night? Some pundits say yes: “That evening of public abasement, rather than sending Mr. Trump away, accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world,” the New York Times wrote last March. “And it captured the degree to which Mr. Trump’s campaign is driven by a deep yearning sometimes obscured by his bluster and bragging: a desire to be taken seriously.”
However, Trump claimed on Fox & Friends that he “loved the evening,” in contradiction to his scowl-like expression throughout the dinner.
This year’s dinner is already shaping up to be an outlier, as Vanity Fair and the New Yorker have announced that they will not be holding their after-parties per-usual, citing a lack of interest. There have even been calls for comedian Alec Baldwin — who plays President Trump on Saturday Night Live — to headline the dinner as Donald Trump.
In other words, while the cat’s away, the mice will play.
