{"id":8115,"date":"2026-07-24T20:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T20:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=8115"},"modified":"2026-07-24T20:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T20:08:10","slug":"trump-returns-to-correspondents-dinner-after-shooting-disrupted-april-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=8115","title":{"rendered":"Trump returns to correspondents\u2019 dinner after shooting disrupted April event"},"content":{"rendered":"

The president will address a smaller, heavily secured gathering Friday as his administration intensifies its legal and rhetorical attacks on journalists.<\/strong><\/p>

Read more What happened under Trump this week<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n
President Donald Trump speaks to the press after a gunman attempted to storm the correspondents’ dinner in April. (Jose Luis Magana\/AP)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

Three months after an apparent assassination attempt on President Donald Trump<\/a> threw the White House correspondents\u2019 dinner into chaos, the president is set to address reporters at a slimmed-down redo of the event Friday, amid escalating attacks by his administration against journalists.<\/p>\n

The fraught event was poised to put the president on the dais with reporters who have covered him aggressively, even as the administration has stepped up its legal pursuit of journalists who report on subjects that the White House views as national security threats.<\/p>\n

Trump has offered mixed messages about his plans for a dinner that traditionally has involved presidents giving lighthearted speeches that poke fun at themselves and at the people who cover them.<\/p>\n

When the dinner\u2019s new date was announced last month<\/a>, he wrote on social media, \u201cI don\u2019t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out. In any event, it will be a \u2018HOT\u2019 ticket!\u201d<\/p>\n

Media critics have long questioned the White House correspondents\u2019 dinner<\/a>, which was first held in 1921, saying that it is an overly cozy moment of socializing between the president and reporters who cover the White House. Trump skipped the event during his first term, and the choice of entertainers at the dinner, some of whom offered sharp attacks on the president, became a lightning rod.<\/p>\n

The dissonance may be especially sharp this year given Trump\u2019s recent attacks on the press. The Society of Professional Journalists called this week for the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association to use the dinner to condemn the Trump administration\u2019s attacks on journalists.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe it is hypocritical to celebrate the First Amendment in front of the man who relentlessly attacks it,\u201d the group said in an open letter.<\/p>\n

Trump never delivered the speech he planned for the April 25 dinner at the Washington Hilton before it was interrupted by a gunman who attempted to storm the basement ballroom where the dinner was being held. Cole Tomas Allen, 31, has been charged with attempting to assassinate the president<\/a>, and an FBI special agent said in an affidavit that Allen had set an email to be sent to friends and family with \u201ctargets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president looks forward to finishing what he started,\u201d White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday, saying the dinner \u201cpromises to be a very entertaining and memorable evening.\u201d<\/p>

Read more Democrats recommend South Carolina vote first in 2028 presidential primary<\/a><\/p>\n

Security is set to be high for the event, which is being held at the Waldorf Astoria in downtown Washington. Trump\u2019s family company operated that venue as the Trump International Hotel during the president\u2019s first term, then sold their lease<\/a> on the property in 2022 for $375 million.<\/p>\n

The guest list has shrunk to fewer than 700, a stripped-down affair with attendees including mostly just the journalists who cover the president, rather than the more than 2,500 \u2014 including government officials, political operatives and mostly B-list celebrities \u2014 who attended in April.<\/p>\n

But many of the original tensions remain.<\/p>\n

In the hours following the April shooting, Trump was unusually conciliatory toward reporters, making an appearance in the White House briefing room still dressed in his tuxedo as he took questions from many of the reporters who had been at the dinner earlier in the evening.<\/p>\n

But that tone dissipated by the next day, when he called CBS News anchor Norah O\u2019Donnell \u201ca disgrace\u201d after she read excerpts from the alleged gunman\u2019s manifesto to him.<\/p>\n

Since then, his administration has returned to attacks on the press.<\/p>\n

Trump last week called for stripping broadcast licenses from networks that didn\u2019t air his prime-time speech<\/a> about election integrity. And the Justice Department this month issued subpoenas to New York Times journalists<\/a> who had reported on security concerns surrounding the luxury Boeing 747 that the Qatari government gifted for use as Air Force One, seeking their phone records in pursuit of leaks.<\/p>\n

The subpoenas were dropped Thursday<\/a> following a federal judge\u2019s withering questioning of Justice Department officials, who vowed to press ahead with their investigation into the sources of the story.<\/p>\n

One element of the dinner will be consistent with April: Entertainer and magician Oz Pearlman<\/a> is once again on the program, a selection that sidesteps the politics of humor.<\/p>\n

The dinner\u2019s main organizer, CBS News Senior White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang, who completed her term as president of the correspondents\u2019 association earlier this month, said she wanted to keep the focus of the dinner on a celebration of press freedom amid the country\u2019s 250th birthday celebrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not allow an act of violence to have the last word, especially during a year when we are reflecting on the 250th anniversary of America and everything we stand for,\u201d Jiang wrote in a letter last month announcing the new dinner.<\/p>

Read more Mali\u2019s government does not rule out U.S. military intervention<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The president will address a smaller, heavily secured gathering Friday as his administration intensifies its legal and rhetorical attacks on journalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump returns to correspondents\u2019 dinner after shooting disrupted April event - Moving Insider USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=8115\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump returns to correspondents\u2019 dinner after shooting disrupted April event - 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