White House Correspondents' Dinner
4/26/202611 min
April 25, 2026
Trump decides to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner for the first time, Trump has tried to silence the press during his second term, Trump and the First Lady were rushed out of the event after word that an armed man was outside the event, No one at the event was harmed, The right to freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution, While the press was openly partisan in the early days of the republic, by the 1880s the country began to push back and the number of independent newspapers took off, Reporters looking for stories began to station themselves at the White House, White House reporters organized the WHCA in 1914, The WHCA ensured that journalists who covered the White House would have access to press passes, After Trump’s re-election, the administration would no longer recognize the role of the WHCA in managing the White House press pool.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMichael Moss0:00
[theme music] Hello, this is Michael Moss. Heather Cox Richardson is unable to read the letter today, so I will be reading it in her place. April twenty-fifth, twenty twenty-six. Tonight, the White House Correspondents' Association, or WHCA, held its annual black-tie dinner, which is designed both to raise money for the institution and to provide a glitzy night out for journalists. In recent years, the event has drawn criticism for the chumminess it reveals between White House journalists and the lawmakers they cover. This year, that concern was heightened dramatically when the WHCA invited President Donald J. Trump to attend the dinner and to give a speech. Since he entered the political arena, Trump has denigrated the press and even urged supporters to attack journalists. But in his second term, his administration has gone further, trying to silence the press with lawsuits or threats of them against media outlets and individuals, blocking access to the White House and the Pentagon for journalists Trump dislikes, personally attacking female journalists, arresting independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, and raiding the home of Washington Post political correspondent Hannah Natanson. Inviting him to address the press at