Once Bubbly, The White House Correspondents’ Dinner Goes Flat

This year’s White House Correspondents’ weekend is shaping up to be a contrast moment ripe for tension and awkwardness.

The press, somber and tentative after President Donald Trump and his administration have pulled access and sued outlets over coverage, has ditched the comedian at Saturday’s annual dinner in what’s been billed as a celebration of independence. Trump, a no-show for each of his previous four years in office, will be in Rome on Saturday for the funeral of Pope Francis.

Trump’s supporters have relished what they call the snub of the mainstream media as an opportunity to brandish his populist credentials — a gesture made all the more poignant by his attendance at a funeral for a renowned religious leader.

But Trump’s travels have their own complications. He’ll be memorializing a liberal pontiff who made no secret of his disdain for Trump’s harsh mass deportation agenda. And although he will dodge a press corps he views as hostile, Trump will share quarters for a few hours with a cadre of fellow world leaders reeling from his sweeping tariffs and bristling over his recent comments that “Crimea will stay with Russia.”

Trump’s allies say his attendance at the funeral will give him a high-profile moment.

“The death of the pope, while coincidental timing, only allows Trump to elevate his disdain for the mainstream media,” said Eric Bolling, a longtime conservative pundit.

Steve Bannon sees it as a study in contrasts: “President Trump transformed from leader of the Free World to the leader of Christendom while media elites bore themselves at interminable parties.”

Asked for comment, the administration sought to highlight the contrast: “While President Trump is paying respect and inspiring peace under the stained glass of St. Peter’s Basilica, the corporate media is partying in the pews of power—quite literally fiddling away as Rome mourns,” said a senior White House official granted anonymity to speak candidly about the weekend.

Trump’s relationship with the Correspondents’ Dinner is fraught. In 2011, former President Barack Obama roasted Trump, saying he would “bring some change to the White House” while displaying a tacky, Trump-branded casino to the raucous laughter of the Washington political establishment. It was a turning point for Trump, who was in the room, with his longtime political adviser Roger Stone telling PBS in 2016 that it was “the night he resolves to run for president.”

But during his first term and now his second, the distance between Trump and the dinner has echoed his relationship with the press. Although it is customary for the president, first lady and White House press secretary to join the White House Correspondents’ Association board on the dais, Trump never attended the dinner during his first term. Some of his senior aides, notably press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, attended during the beginning of his presidency, and left the event scarred by the comedian's cutting satire.

That distance will continue this year: Although Air Force One is scheduled to land stateside early Saturday evening, the president and first lady are planning to stay the night at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, before returning to Washington on Sunday. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last month she also would not attend. Neither will many Republicans, who in the past saw the dinner as one of the hottest tickets in Washington but are now taking cues from Trump.

“This has nosedived real quick,” said Sean Spicer, who served as press secretary during Trump’s first term. “The president … didn’t go for four years, so that’s not a huge change. But any Republican will be few and far between.” (Spicer said he will not attend, though he has been spotted at a pre-party.)

This year’s dinner comes as Trump and his administration have shown open disdain for the White House press corps’ norms. The White House has yanked power from WHCA, moving to unilaterally decide which outlets can cover the president and when. Trump, Leavitt and her press shop frequently refer to the media as “fake news,” make ad hominem attacks against journalists and revoke access as punishment for critical coverage or, in the case of the Associated Press, for failing to change how it refers to the Gulf of Mexico in its influential style book. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio has moved to detain and deport noncitizen legal residents on the basis of anti-Israel speech.

The WHCA is branding this year’s dinner “as a celebration of the foundational American value of a free and independent press,” it’s president, former POLITICO journalist Eugene Daniels, said in an email to members last month. He added that he was “re-envisioning” the event and that the board had unanimously decided to no longer feature a comedic headliner after its initial pick, Amber Ruffin, joked the Trump administration is “kind of a bunch of murderers.”

“This year is about creating a dinner that matches the mood of our members and changing a few traditions to do so,” Daniels said in an interview released Thursday with the journalist Oliver Darcy. “We feel very good about the experience we’re offering.”

Still, WHCA must walk a tightrope, showing support for press freedom and celebrating reporters’ work while recognizing that Trump and his allies are eager to capitalize on any misstep that might lend credence to their assertions of bias.

“If they get on their high horse about democracy being under attack, I think they’re going to dig in deeper,” Spicer said. “If they start to talk about Trump and attacks on their profession, it’s just going to further divide.”

The press corps itself also looks different this year, saturated with MAGA-friendly figures the White House has embraced with open arms. And there will be multiple alternative events on Saturday, including a “new media party” hosted by Substack and a Bannon-hosted bash at MAGA mecca Butterworth’s called “the uninvited.”

Trump, meanwhile, is trading one awkward venue for another. In Rome, he’ll attend the funeral of a pope who once said the president is “not Christian” and has been overtly critical of Trump’s mass deportation plan. The pontiff’s final public address on Easter slammed “how much contempt is stirred up at times toward the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants.”

Also attending the funeral are Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who stormed out of the White House in February after a heated Oval Office exchange, and former President Joe Biden, Trump’s two-time presidential rival.

The White House left the door open to Trump meeting with world leaders during his short stint in Rome, but has yet to announce anything official.

Dasha Burns contributed to this report.