U.S. President Donald Trump — who regularly launches lawsuits and verbal tirades against news outlets and journalists he dislikes — will be the featured guest at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, an annual gala celebrating freedom of the press.
It’s the first time Trump will attend the event as president.
The association’s decision to welcome him is drawing sharp criticism and prompting concern about the potential impact on public perception of the news media that cover the White House.
Six national journalism advocacy groups say Trump has engaged in “the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom of the press by a sitting American president.”
That assault, according to a lengthy list compiled by the groups, has included trying to ban journalists from reporting any defence-related news without Pentagon approval, launching federal investigations into major broadcast outlets over their coverage and suing the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the parent company of CBS News for alleged defamation.
It has critics wondering why an association made up of journalists who cover the White House would want Trump attending an event designed to honour the cherished First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the government from restricting press freedom.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on April 16. (Jen Golbeck/The Associated Press)
The journalism groups and more than 250 individuals — including retired TV anchors Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson — have signed a letter to the association calling for the dinner to include “a forceful defense of freedom of the press and condemnation of those who threaten that freedom.”
Caroline Hendrie, executive director of the Society of Professional Journalists, one of the groups that signed the letter, says the dinner needs to send a message that government actions endangering press freedom are unacceptable.
“What’s happening right now in the United States is not just normal friction between the government and the press. It is a sustained effort to intimidate, to discredit and to actually weaken independent journalism,” Hendrie told CBC News.
Late-night comics have hosted and roasted
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a century-long annual tradition in Washington that has evolved in recent years into a televised, red-carpet gala with celebrities in the audience and late-night TV stars as its hosts.
Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have each had turns as MC, with both the president and the press receiving some at-times pointed comedic roasting.
None of the comics who satirize Trump nightly on network television will get the chance to do so in person at this year’s dinner. The featured entertainer is Oz Pearlman, a mentalist/magician.
Saturday Night Live comedian Colin Jost hosted the 2024 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, which then-president Joe Biden attended. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/The Associated Press)
The president also gets his turn at the mic. Barack Obama dished out his share of jokey barbs over the years, perhaps most famously in 2011 when he mocked Trump, who was in the audience.
When Trump skipped the event in 2017, he became the first sitting president not to attend since 1981, when Ronald Reagan missed it because he was still recovering from the gunshot wound he suffered in an assassination attempt a few weeks earlier.
Trump has called press ‘enemy of the people’
Instead, Trump went to a rally in Pennsylvania where he slammed the media as “fake news” and said they deserved “a big, fat failing grade” on telling the truth.
It has some observers wondering what the president will say on Saturday night about a group that he has often labelled “the enemy of the people.”
Kelly McBride, who chairs the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based non-profit focused on journalism training and media literacy, predicts Trump will gloat about beating the press into submission.
“I bet he’s going to declare victory over the press and that he has proven to the public that journalism cannot be trusted, that it’s all fake news, and tout the success of his presidency in an environment where no one can ask him questions,” McBride told CBC News.
CNN journalists Pamela Brown, left, Dana Bash, centre, and Kaitlan Collins pose on the red carpet at the 2025 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. (Jose Luis Magana/The Associated Press)
McBride authored a recent commentary in which she argues against the very premise of the correspondents’ association dinner, not just for the fact that this year journalists and their corporate owners will sit down with a president who repeatedly undermines their credibility.
“I think the journalism that has been done on this administration is remarkable,” McBride said.
“What matters to [ordinary Americans] is that there is a competent and strong press corps in the United States that can hold this president and his administration accountable,” she said.
McBride says it also matters that the public has faith in the news media, an institution that long-term research suggests is losing credibility. She’s concerned that an event like the correspondents’ association dinner will only weaken that faith.
“It is reasonable for members of the public to say, ‘You know, I’m just going to add this fact to a whole pile of other facts that are encouraging me to not trust you,'” McBride said.
The president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Weijia Jiang, said in a statement that the dinner funds the organization’s awards honouring journalistic excellence and scholarships for future reporters.
“We’re happy the president has accepted our invitation and look forward to hosting him,” Jiang said.
The association has often criticized the administration since Trump’s return to the White House last year for various restrictions on its members. That included barring the venerable Associated Press from White House events over the wire service’s refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” as Trump unilaterally renamed it last year.
Trump has shown particular disdain for female reporters. Some of the most egregious examples happened in a stretch of less than two weeks last November:
“Quiet! Quiet piggy!” he barked at Bloomberg correspondent Catherine Lucey while she was asking him a question about Jeffrey Epstein. He berated ABC News correspondent Mary Bruce as “a terrible person and a terrible reporter” and threatened taking away ABC’s broadcast licence after she asked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.He lashed out on social media at New York Times journalist Katie Rogers over an article about his health and stamina, calling her “a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.”
He has also ordered an end to all federal funding of PBS television and National Public Radio and moved to dismantle the federal agency that funds overseas news broadcasts in authoritarian countries. Both orders are being challenged in court.
WATCH | Trump will attend journalism gala he has boycotted since becoming president:
Trump to end boycott of White House Correspondents’ Dinner | About That
Andrew Chang explains why U.S. President Donald Trump decided to attend this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner for the first time as a president, after boycotting the annual event during his first term.
Images provided by The Canadian Press, Reuters and Getty Images