Trump attends rescheduled WHCA dinner months after shooting disrupted event

Washington,UPDATED: Jul 25, 2026 07:46 IST

President Donald Trump on Friday night attended the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, which was rescheduled from April after a shooting disrupted the original event. Speaking to a large gathering of journalists, Trump said, "As I said three months ago, the show must go on."

The dinner was held against the backdrop of both resilience and criticism. WHCA president Weijia Jiang said the message of the evening was, "Tonight our message is this: We are back. We will not be intimidated. We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word." Trump, who had earlier suggested he might deliver the same "rather nasty" remarks he had planned for April, instead signalled early in his speech that he had changed course, though he still said, "This is really the largest group of Trump Derangement Syndrome' people put together at one time."

Trump entered the ballroom to polite applause and was thanked by Jiang for his support. After dinner, he sat through more than an hour of awards presentations, including honours for journalists who had produced pointed reports on him and his administration over the past year. As she welcomed the crowd, Jiang joked, "Let's try this again," adding that the White House press corps "always has a follow-up." She then referred to the trauma and confusion of the April event.

The rescheduled dinner took place at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in a smaller ballroom that could hold about 700 people. Guests entered through a single entrance, passed through two ID checks, and went past a detection dog, armed officers and security guards. There was no red carpet and no separate cocktail receptions before dinner. The dress code was a looser "black tie optional".

There were also changes to the evening's programme. Two additional awards were introduced, one for Victor Gonzales, the Secret Service agent who was staffing a security checkpoint in April and was struck in his protective vest. In a statement, Jiang said, "Officer Gonzales ran toward danger so that thousands of others could make it home safely. His courage stemmed from a dedication to service, which we are looking forward to honouring this week." Another award was to be presented to the staff of the Washington Hilton hotel, where the first dinner had been held. Dinner included grilled peach and burrata salad, lobster and beef Wellington, while mentalist Oz Pearlman returned as entertainment alongside the awards and Trump's remarks.

Jiang and the WHCA board had pushed to stage the dinner again because they did not want a violent act, or the image of colleagues hiding under tables, to define the event. When announcing the rescheduling earlier, Jiang had said the dinner was "a celebration of a free press and the vital role of journalism in our democracy for over a century" and added, "We 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."

At the same time, the decision to hold the dinner again drew criticism. Some argued that the event should not have been rescheduled at all, while others questioned the optics of journalists in formal wear appearing close to the people they cover. Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, said during the deliberations, "It undermines the public faith in how the press does its work, and it makes it look like we are pals with the people we cover."

The dinner also came at a time of rising tension between the media and Trump in his second term. The administration has sought to pressure media organisations in various ways, ranging from sanctions against members of the White House press corps to regulatory action through the Federal Communications Commission and lawsuits. Those tensions rose further this week when, in a New York courtroom on Thursday, the government withdrew subpoenas that would have forced three New York Times reporters to testify about their sources for reports on Trump's Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet, after a federal judge criticised the government's legal work.

That escalation led to a letter from a coalition of press freedom groups and hundreds of former journalists urging the WHCA to take a stronger stand at the dinner. The letter said, "We believe it is hypocritical to celebrate the First Amendment in front of the man who relentlessly attacks it. We urge the WHCA to condemn the administration's actions from the podium and pledge to fight all attempts by his administration to undermine this core pillar of a functioning democracy." In the end, the evening mixed Trump's appearance, awards and entertainment with a broader effort by the WHCA to show that the April shooting would not be the final word on the event.

With PTI Inputs

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