This Year’s WHCD Serves Only to Normalize Trump’s First Amendment Dumpster Fire — I Won’t Be a Part of It

(Sipa via AP Images)

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner has, historically, been a fun and much-needed weekend of political civility. A fancy ball surrounded by events held in celebration of the free press and rooted in a mutual respect and accepted social contract between journalists and their subjects in the halls of power.

An apt comparison is the Christmas Truce during World War I, which saw British and German soldiers drop their weapons for a day, emerge from their trenches, and played soccer instead of trying to kill one another, all before returning to their foxholes to, well, try to kill one another.

The WHCD tradition of a Spring truce? Sadly, those days are long gone, and the long-running animus between the fourth estate and the Trump administration has instead hardened. President Donald Trump’s constant attacks on the media, which in his first term ranged from petty insults to ominous but contained action against the press, have escalated into a war that mirrors authoritarian states in far-flung regions of the world.

That’s why I am opting to skip this year’s weekend.

Admission: I’ve traveled to the nation’s capital for the better part of the last decade, although I often skip the actual dinner because it’s usually a dull affair. I attended the dinner in 2018 when comedian Michelle Wolff brutally mocked Trump’s press secretary at the time, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, which elicited predictable pearl clutching from conservative thought-leaders like Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, who reportedly stormed out of the Hilton in protest — straight into their black car to be ferried to an after party hosted by Playboy magazine. (It was a different time.)

I understand the irony of my criticism, which involves announcing via a haughty column that I’m not going to a bunch of cocktail parties as a protest against self-important members of the press. Trump is suing CBS News for $20 billion, claiming an edit of a Kamala Harris interview rose to election interference, and has sicced his FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, on them as an obvious scare tactic. He strong-armed ABC News to settle a similar dispute, which most legal experts insisted was folly. And, of course, the White House has punished AP by limiting access because it does not like how the international wire service failed to comply with the “Gulf of America” dictate.  Not to mention, the current state of political media is in massive disrepair, which is partly why it is held in such low public esteem. The industry is in dire need of sober reflection and less tooting of its own horns.

The WHCD does many good things. It rewards the best journalistic efforts of the last year, brings attention to serious issues, and raises money for a highly regarded scholarship program for students eager to enter the field. None of these goals, however, need to come with a red carpet entrance at the Washington Hilton and the dizzying series of parties that accompany it.

The entire WHCD has long been mocked as an unnecessary ritual of self-importance, but one could make the same argument about any industry conference. Until recently, this annual tradition hasn’t been that different from, say, a Bar Association or national sales convention. It was a fun and innocent schmoozefest with lots of open bars and naked networking by individuals looking for either loose-lipped sources or maybe greener pastures at a new outlet.

“Nerdprom” was, for a long time, the cool kids’ name for the event, which came with the self-aggrandizing, and wink-wink ironic detachment that is, impossibly, more annoying than the event itself.

My criticism of this year’s event is shared by many in the media I’ve been speaking with this week.

“With Disney bending the knee to Trump, Paramount contemplating doing the same to settle the president’s insane lawsuit against 60 Minutes, the White House bringing in these ridiculously sycophantic alt-media figures — MTG’s boyfriend, et al — it’s an unsettling time to be in news media, and an odd time to be celebrating anything,” one DC correspondent vented to me.

Said a longtime cable news anchor: “To me, this represents everything that’s wrong with both Washington, D.C., and the White House Press Corps, which is in the midst of a crisis of relevancy, public trust, and confidence. Having a big black tie soiree does not read right to Americans.”

“What is there to celebrate?” one prominent editor of an influential outlet said. “The first Trump term was weird enough because the White House didn’t engage, but his staffers like Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway still really gave a shit. Now it’s like the current Trump White House truly — not performatively — hates and is attacking the press.”

One former member of the White House press corps I spoke with expressed dismay at the current leadership of the White House Correspondents’ Association: “If you have Eugene Daniels as your president, you cannot claim to be a non-partisan outlet.” Daniels was recently named co-host of an MSNBC weekend show, though the WHCA board represents outlets from across the partisan spectrum.

Paying attention to various political media outlets reveals that democracy is dying in the shadows. Having rung that alarm bell so often, not many Americans now believe a wolf is lurking in the pasture, which is alarming because right now, President Trump is acting like a wolf trying to bully corporate media outlets into submission. Paging Shari Redstone.

There are no winners in the current WHCD dynamic — Trump is actively threatening media outlets he feels are “out to get him,” and the media has behaved in a manner that has unfortunately led many Americans to agree with Trump’s anti-media rhetoric. The enmity seems to be eagerly engaged in by both sides — is symbiotic animus a thing? I’ve long enjoyed visiting the nation’s capital to make the scene, catch up with old friends, and make new ones.

In 2025, it is brazenly self-evident that a 2,000-seat black-tie event, complete with red-carpet interviews of journalists by entertainment journalists  — What are we doing here, people? — Neither matches the tone nor is an appropriate reaction to the president’s undermining attacks.

Having a big black-tie celebration replete with self-congratulatory pats on the back does not feel like the right course of action at a time when our nation is in a perilous state. It is a clear signal that the WHCA believes, despite its steadfast opposition to the Trump administration’s attacks on journalists, things aren’t so bad that they can’t still throw a big party.

This undermines their repeated and dire warnings but also signals to the Trump administration that they will remain servile, as long as there is an open bar.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.