Typically, the White House Correspondents Association dinner features a comedy set full of Hollywood stars, zinger, and a public display of the community between the White House and reporters that cover it.
On Saturday, there were no comedians or presidents for dinner. Among the celebrity moments at hand was Michael Chikris, whose most famous TV role in “The Shield” ended in 2008.
“It's just us,” Eugene Daniels, president of the association and host of MSNBC, told his fellow journalists at the beginning of the night.
A reporter who spoke from Day highlighted the importance of the initial revision and earned repeated ovations from the black tie crowd. Leviti came in the form of clips from the past few years.
Holding hands on dinner, once the pinnacle of the capital's social calendar, is just as Washington's tradition as the companies sponsored parties surrounding it. However, as media agencies tackle an onslaught from President Trump, which threatened by suing and threatening television networks, they banned the Associated Press from the president's events, overturning the daily mechanisms of the White House press squad.
“Mood and reality suck,” said journalist and news executive Jim Vandehay, who helped create two stubborn Beltway Media Politico and later Axios.
“The president is not present, and there are no comedians to tease us all. Under government pressure, television networks have buckled, stopping corporate interference, and quitting the media and government's public sourness,” Vandehei said. “Enjoy the weekend!”
It is true that in the past few days alone, the “60 minutes” head has resigned as CBS owners considered paying millions of dollars to resolve the lawsuit filed by President Trump, and the committee protecting journalists, a nonprofit organization supporting journalists living under AutoClot, has resigned as they issued journalist safety advisors for unified journalists. And on Friday afternoon, hours before the first wave of weekend parties, the Justice Department announced it would summon a reporter's phone record and force testimony in a leaked investigation.
Maybe journalists can use one or two to relax.
“Our clients work hard to cover today's non-stop news cycle. Once a year, we throw a big weekend to honor them to honor them for their work,” he said, heading news for a creative artist agency representing television journalists like Andrea Mitchell and Audi Corniche, and co-host of Jing-Packed Sawley at the Private Gelget Club on Friday. “Why is this year different?”
Tammy Haddad of Washington Imprezario said that the garden party on Saturdays was unabated each year, but said that the weekend was still a community opportunity for all the tensions over press access and independence. “Some people choose to leave, but they have the opportunity to create new connections and find common ground,” she said. (Her guests include editor Tina Brown, chefs Bobby Frey, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and celebrity doctors who have recently vowed to lead Medicare and Medicaid.)
Still, the correspondent's dinner itself carried tenors more serious than in the past few years. Some of the biggest applause came to Associated Press journalists who were caught up in a legal battle with the administration after Trump tried to restrict access to reporters because he used the term “Gulf of Mexico” in his report.
Daniels has pledged his support for the Associated Press and another outlet that was targeted by Trump's dim corn, the Associated Press and Voice of America. With no celebrities in the evening, Daniels served as keynote speaker and sought journalistic solidarity.
“I'm against not us,” he said. “What we are not, the enemy of the people, and what we are not, the enemy of the nation.” He called journalists “competitive and forced,” but “humans” are also “humans,” and he focuses on the efforts that reporters make sure that accurate information reaches the public.
In an interview, top journalists from multiple news outlets said it was nearly impossible to convince celebrities and lawmakers to attend as guests. One reporter said there was a “dozen” list of people who refused an invitation to attend a publication's table.
This is a dinner that once attracted many people like George Clooney and Steven Spielberg. On Saturday, the town's most AU cow actor appeared to be Jason Isaacs, the British man who played his father in the latest edition of “The White Lotus,” where the character spent the season fantasizing about murder and suicide.
Atlantic correspondent Mark Leibovich said it was exhilarating to spend the night focused more on reporting acts than the comedian's speeches.
Still, he added, “I wish we could use the time we got from it to leave an hour ago.”
The Correspondents Association represents hundreds of journalists who regularly cover the White House mechanisms. That autonomy has been repeatedly undermined by the Trump administration, breaking precedents by hand, granting access to a “pool” covering smaller presidential events and allowing access to a “pool” signaling plans to shake up the seating charts of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. (For decades, the Correspondents Association has overseen the pool and seating charts.)
In February, the group announced that actress and talk show host Amber Ruffin would become a dinner entertainer. Last month, Ruffin's appearance was cancelled. She appeared on a podcast where she called the Trump administration “a kind of bunch of murderers.”
Daniels said “I hope that the focus will not be on the politics of division.”
Ruffin cancelled her set and chuckled the group, saying, “That's what we say in the First Amendment so that we can be kind to Republicans at fancy dinners.”
During Trump's first term in office for the past few years, including 2018 – the White House spokesman attended dinner and sat on Day. Trump's current spokesman, Karoline Leavitt, said he declined the invitation.
On Friday, in an interview with Axios reporter Mike Allen, Leavitt was asked to explain the news media in a word.
“I'm exhausted,” she said with a smile.
