WASHINGTON (AP) — The annual dinner with governors at the White House is typically a chance for leaders from both parties to come together, socialize and spend a low-key evening with the president. But like many traditions during President Donald Trump’s second term, Saturday’s dinner has proven unusually controversial.
Ahead of this week’s gathering of the National Governors Association, Trump ridiculed the bipartisan group’s leadership, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma and Democratic Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland. He refused to invite Moore, along with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, to a working event at the White House on Friday — only to relent at the last minute.
Then the event ended shortly after Trump learned of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down his sweeping tariff policy.
Dozens of Democrats had threatened to boycott Saturday’s dinner if members of their party were blocked from Friday’s meeting. But even after Moore’s attendance, some said they still wouldn’t show up.
“President Trump has made this whole thing a farce,” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement.
When the dinner finally rolled around, no Democrats were spotted in the room. Enjoying the black-tie affair, with tall candles arranged on tables, were just top administration officials and Republican governors.
In brief remarks, Trump joked that state leaders “look in that mirror and say, I should be president, not him.”
The president didn’t criticize any Democrats by name, but he blamed two states led by Democratic governors when he mentioned a sewage spill in the Potomac River near Washington.
“We have to clean up some mess that Maryland and Virginia have left us,” Trump said, adding that “it’s unbelievable what they can do with incompetence.”
The ruptured pipe is part of a Washington-based utility that’s federally regulated and under the oversight of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Vice President JD Vance praised the governors for having to make tough decisions. When you’re in his position, Vance said, “nobody blames you when anything goes wrong.”
Those who have attended previous dinners said they offered a rare and helpful opportunity for governors to connect with the president and members of his Cabinet away from the pressure of daily governing. Some also said the dinner was a chance to connect with fellow governors from other parties whom they might not see very often.
Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican governor of Arkansas who briefly challenged Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, recalled being assigned to a table one year with then-Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and getting to know her family.
“It’s a glowing evening in the White House,” Hutchinson, who once chaired the NGA, said in an interview.
The final day of the conference on Saturday focused on issues including affordability and political civility. During a conversation about immigration, Moore and Stitt said that both parties have failed over decades to address the issue.
Stitt said that states should be empowered to issue workforce permits and warned that both parties are making false political assumptions.
“People think ‘OK, all the Democrats want open borders,’” he said, “and ‘all Republicans hate immigrants.’”
But Stitt noted that “rural Oklahoma Trump voters” have privately approached him, saying they couldn’t operate their businesses without people who were trying to obtain work authorization.
For all the turmoil surrounding this week’s meeting, Moore said the conference was a success.
“There were a lot of things that were put in our way to try to distract us from our mission, to try to divide us as individual governors, to try to make the mission of this organization where a bipartisan group of governors can come together and solve problems on behalf of our people, to try to make our work irrelevant,” he said. “To all the people who tried to make that happen, you failed.”