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Rescheduled Dinner, New Security
President Donald Trump is set to deliver a “unifying yet vicious” speech at the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Friday night, the White House said.
The dinner is taking place at the Waldorf Astoria on Pennsylvania Avenue, after the original event was scrapped in April when a man fired a shotgun at a security checkpoint outside the ballroom.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump’s remarks will be “a combination of unifying yet vicious, and serious yet hilarious, all at the same time, if you can imagine that,” and ABC News reported the rescheduled dinner followed the April shooting that authorities say left Secret Service officer Victor Gonzales shot and wounded.
The Secret Service director Sean Curran told reporters that agents were braced for trouble even at the black-tie dinner, saying “We do expect bad people to show up,” while NBC News said the event is being reheld in a different, smaller and more secure venue.
The White House said the dinner will be dedicated in part to Victor Gonzales and hotel staff who helped guests during the attack, and the man charged for the shooting, Cole Allen, has pleaded not guilty to attempting to assassinate the president.
Press Tensions and Awards
The rescheduled dinner is also being framed as a test of the Trump administration’s relationship with the press, with NBC News reporting that the White House has barred the Associated Press from the White House press pool and limited other journalists’ access to the Pentagon.
Ahead of Friday’s event, an AP story carried by First Amendment Watch said hundreds of former or retired journalists and eight press freedom groups are asking the White House Correspondents’ Association to stand up to the Trump administration’s recent attacks on the media.
That letter, organized by former ABC News correspondent Lisa Stark and producer Ian Cameron, urged the WHCA to “forcefully stand up for freedom of the press in front of the President, publicly defend the journalists he attacks, and vow to resist his administration’s concerted effort to undermine the First Amendment,” according to First Amendment Watch.
The WHCA said it will present a special award, the President’s Award for Exceptional Service, during Friday night’s dinner to Gonzales and the staff of the Washington Hilton, and Weijia Jiang said Gonzales “played a significant role when he ran toward danger so that thousands of others could make it home safely.”
NBC News also reported that the program is expected to be “very much the same” as the original dinner back in April, including entertainment by mentalist Oz Pearlman, while the size will be reduced to about 700 people.
What Comes Next for WHCA
The rescheduled dinner comes after prosecutors alleged that Cole Allen opened fire inside the Washington Hilton hotel during the April event, where thousands of journalists and guests gathered for the annual celebration of the First Amendment.
ABC News reported that Allen pleaded not guilty in May to charges including attempting to assassinate the president, and it said the bullet struck Gonzales’s protective vest and he continued responding to the threat.
NBC 5 Chicago reported that the dinner is set to begin at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on Friday, with a live stream and red carpet beginning at 6 p.m. ET, and it said the Waldorf Astoria venue will host about 680 people rather than the 2,600 guests invited to the April event.
The stakes described by the sources center on whether the WHCA will use the podium to respond to what the letter calls “the administration’s attacks on journalists and press freedom,” with First Amendment Watch quoting the letter’s criticism that it is “hypocritical to celebrate the First Amendment in front of the man who relentlessly attacks it.”
The White House also said the speech will be watched closely because it will be the first Trump has made at the event in either of his two terms, and the White House said the guest list is missing Melania Trump, JD Vance and Marco Rubio, who were all there in April.
