{"id":4915,"date":"2026-07-25T11:08:03","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T11:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homebuyerrelocation.com\/?p=4915"},"modified":"2026-07-25T11:08:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T11:08:03","slug":"trump-returns-to-correspondents-dinner-3-months-after-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homebuyerrelocation.com\/?p=4915","title":{"rendered":"Trump returns to correspondents\u2019 dinner 3 months after shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"
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President Trump returned to the rescheduled White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner Friday night, delivering a rambling, hour-long speech that praised some journalists, took potshots at others, made jokes about public figures\u2019 weight and intellect, and quipped about a third presidential term.<\/p>\n

Read more Eight years after deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, Tree of Life rabbi bids farewell<\/a><\/p>\n

He assured the crowd of journalists, though, that he\u2019d scrapped the most biting parts of his remarks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was going to be a doozy,\u201d Trump said about the speech he\u2019d been prepared to give in April, before a gunman upended the original dinner and forced its postponement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I said three months ago, the show must go on,\u201d the president said to begin his remarks, hailing the decision to reschedule the dinner. He referred to \u201cthe attempted mass murder\u201d that could have happened that night in April, but then moved largely to humor – and insults.<\/p>\n

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Trump\u2019s return to the correspondents\u2019 dinner – and his promise to come back next year as well – represented a notable moment in his relationship with the news media, which he has attacked, sued and taken administrative action against since he began his second term early last year. Among the audience members were reporters he had denounced and barred from events.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s sometimes off-color speech, which lasted just over an hour, was full of vague potshots directed at individuals he doesn\u2019t like – from Jane Fonda to Bruce Springsteen to \u201cBarack Hussein Obama.\u201d The audience, reacting at first with some friendly laughs, slowly quieted to scattered titters as the insults piled up.<\/p>\n

Among other targets of Trump\u2019s humor: Late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel; Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; California Gov. Gavin Newsom; former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; and Trump\u2019s own speechwriters, whose jokes he sometimes criticized even as he delivered them. Some of the comments flirted with racism.<\/p>\n

The president also spent some time expressing pride in the ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, formerly the Trump International Hotel. \u201cIt\u2019s great to be back at a place that I know very well, because I built it,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

He also made reference to the journalism awards that had been handed out earlier in the evening, most of them for stories challenging him and his administration. \u201cDo I have a say in those awards?\u201d he asked with a grimace.<\/p>\n

He made a brief mention of the Iran war and several remarks about the ballroom he is building at the White House. He also used the occasion to joke about the possibility he would serve a third term – something barred by the U.S. Constitution\u2019s 22nd Amendment.<\/p>\n

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\u201cJust like my presidency, the second time is always better,\u201d the president quipped. \u201cAnd the third time will be better yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI\u2019m only kidding.\u201d Then, at the end, he donned a red cap that said \u201cTrump 2028\u201d and delivered the \u201cscoop\u201d that he was running again.<\/p>\n

It was a very different dinner than the previous one<\/h3>\n

Earlier, Trump had entered the ballroom to polite applause, and was thanked for his support by outgoing White House Correspondents\u2019 Association president Weijia Jiang of CBS News. After dinner, he then sat through more than an hour of awards presentations.<\/p>\n

One of the winners, Tyler Pager of the New York Times, was in fact one of the reporters who had been subpoenaed by Trump\u2019s Justice Department over his reporting about Trump\u2019s Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet. Those subpoenas were withdrawn on Thursday in a New York courtroom – just one of the arenas where the president, in his second term, has been seeking to control media coverage that displeases him.<\/p>\n

The rescheduled dinner was taking place at a smaller venue this time that held only about 700 people. Security was markedly tighter. Guests entered via a single entrance, through two ID checks and past a detection dog, armed officers and security guards. There was no red carpet and no separate cocktail receptions preceding the dinner.<\/p>\n

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\u201cLet\u2019s try this again,\u201d Jiang quipped, welcoming the crowd. The White House press corps, she noted, \u201calways have a follow-up.\u201d Turning serious, she referred back to the trauma and confusion of the original dinner in April.<\/p>\n

\u201cTonight our message is this: We are back,\u201d she said. \u201cWe will not be intimidated. We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Early in his speech, Trump signaled that he had decided to tone it down. But he kept some zingers. Like this one, to the media-heavy audience: \u201cThis is really the largest group of \u2018Trump Derangement Syndrome\u2019 people put together at one time.\u201d<\/p>\n

People received awards for bravery during April shooting<\/h3>\n

Besides the pared-down approach, there was another change at Friday\u2019s dinner: two additional awards. One was presented to Victor Gonzales, the Secret Service agent who was staffing a security checkpoint in April and was struck in his protective vest.<\/p>\n

Gonzales \u201cplaced himself directly in harm\u2019s way and engaged the armed suspect,\u201d Jiang said. \u201cHe stayed in the fight and the attacker was stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n

A second award was presented to the staff of the Washington Hilton hotel, site of the first dinner, hailed for professionalism under pressure.<\/p>\n

The dress code this time was a looser \u201cblack tie optional,\u201d and dinner included grilled peach and burrata salad, lobster and beef Wellington. The evening, as in April, featured entertainment by mentalist Oz Pearlman – who this time got the chance to do his act..<\/p>\n

Jiang and her fellow board members had worked hard to bring about this WHCA dinner 2.0, not wanting to let a violent act – or the image of colleagues hiding under tables – remain the final thought. Announcing the rescheduling, she emphasized the dinner\u2019s stated purpose: \u201cA celebration of a free press and the vital role of journalism in our democracy for over a century.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s still lots of criticism of the event<\/h3>\n

But it\u2019s also clear that some people felt the dinner should not be rescheduled at all.<\/p>\n

Many never thought it was much of a good look in the first place, with the sight of journalists in formal wear cozying up to their sources, or the objects of their reporting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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,\u201d Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, said when the deliberations were taking place.<\/p>\n

The new dinner came at a time of fast-increasing tension between the media and a president who, in his second term, has tried to exert pressure on media outlets he is unhappy with in a variety of ways. That pressure has ranged from sanctions against members of the White House press corps to regulatory actions through the Federal Communications Commission to outright lawsuits. Those tensions have only escalated since April.<\/p>\n

Trump, though, ended with an attempt to mend fences to a point. \u201cI have a lot of respect for your profession,\u201d he told the assembled journalists. He also touted his own success, and declared: \u201cWhen I\u2019m not around, you\u2019re all gonna be broke.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he concluded about the evening: \u201cI didn\u2019t know what to expect. It\u2019s far worse than I originally thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Tony Romo arrested for OWI in Milwaukee, due in court in September<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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President Trump returned to the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Friday night, delivering a rambling, hour-long speech that praised some journalists, took potshots at others, made jokes about public figures’ weight and intellect, and quipped about a third presidential term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-trump-central"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump returns to correspondents\u2019 dinner 3 months after shooting - Home Buyer Relocation<\/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:\/\/homebuyerrelocation.com\/?p=4915\" \/>\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 3 months after shooting - 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