(CNN) — Friday’s rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner will be smaller and a bit more sober than the gala that was marred by gun violence last April.
It will be held at a different hotel at a different time of the year. But the same rifts between Trump and the press will be fully on display.
President Donald Trump, America’s chief media critic, will speak to a room full of journalists, many of whom have been swept up in his government-wide pressure campaign against the independent press.
“The president’s speech will be a combination of unifying yet vicious, and serious yet hilarious, all at the same time, if you can imagine that,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Friday in a statement. “One thing I can assure you: It will be entertaining.”
White House correspondents will also take to the podium and affirm the importance of the First Amendment — a unique opportunity given that Trump will be there to hear it. And the mentalist Oz Pearlman will be the evening’s featured entertainer.
Officials say there will be enhanced security measures — and a far smaller crowd.
First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who all attended the first time around, will not be there this time due to scheduling conflicts, a White House official confirmed.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and other officials are expected to attend.
CNN will begin special coverage of the event at 8 p.m. Eastern.
“The dinner,” as it is colloquially known in Washington, has many critics who say media executives, editors and correspondents shouldn’t be mingling with administration officials who treat the press as the enemy.
Moreover, some April attendees had no appetite for a July redo. But the correspondents’ association felt it was important to finish what they started in April; hand out the group’s annual journalism awards; and make a statement.
“America has spent the past year talking about the fabric of our democracy as we celebrate its 250th anniversary,” organizer Weijia Jiang told CNN. “Of all years, this was not the one to allow our annual celebration of the First Amendment be ripped away. More than ever, we have to recognize the freedoms that make us who we are.”
The dinner that didn’t happen
Jiang, who completed her term as president of the correspondents’ association earlier this month, was hopeful that April’s soirée would repair strained relations with the White House and underscore the press corps’ enduring power.
Trump had snubbed the correspondents’ association throughout his first term in office and again in 2025, so attending this year meant he was belatedly embracing a 100-year tradition of presidents roasting and toasting the press.
Trump was expected to do a lot of roasting that April evening, but “the dinner” was interrupted before dinner was even served. Waiters were starting to pick up salad plates inside the cavernous Washington Hilton ballroom when a gunman opened fire near a security checkpoint outside.
The alleged gunman, Cole Allen, has pleaded not guilty to attempting to assassinate the president and other charges. A trial date in the case has yet to be set.
When shots were fired, Trump was evacuated from the ballroom. Members of Trump’s cabinet were also rushed out of the room. Attendees instinctively ducked under tables and chairs, not knowing what had just happened. For two to three minutes, the ballroom felt like the scene of an active shooter drill, or worse.
It gradually became apparent that a gunman had tried to rush into the ballroom, and that the hotel was a crime scene. The event was called off, and Trump held a late-night press conference at the White House, with the president and the correspondents all still wearing their black-tie best.
Trump struck a tone of unity that night, but it lasted less than 24 hours. He taped an interview for “60 Minutes” the next day, and bristled at CBS correspondent Norah O’Donnell’s questions, calling her a “disgrace” and saying “you’re horrible people.”
The interview with O’Donnell showed that Trump wants attention but not accountability: He covets the media’s attention, like the big “60 Minutes” spotlight, but can’t stand being challenged by the media. But the press exists to hold people in power accountable. So tension is ubiquitous and inescapable.
The looming First Amendment fights
With both words and actions, the Trump administration has sought to weaken the news media, often under the guise of challenging biased coverage and restoring trust.
Those efforts have continued since April’s scrapped dinner: Trump has repeated his calls for certain networks to be punished by the government; Trump’s FCC has challenged ABC’s station licenses; the State Department has announced strict new limits on foreign journalist visas; and Trump has repeatedly likened acts of journalism to “treason.”
Earlier this month, the Justice Department issued subpoenas to several reporters at The New York Times as part of an aggressive leak investigation, prompting condemnation from the correspondents’ association and other First Amendment groups.
On Thursday, the DOJ said it would withdraw the subpoenas under withering scrutiny from a federal judge.
That’s some of the mood music for Friday night’s get-together — leaving some members of the media to say Trump shouldn’t be invited at all, resuming a debate that began last spring.
A letter signed by hundreds of veteran journalists and sent to the correspondents’ association this week urged the organization 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.”
There have also been differences of opinion over holding a do-over of the dinner. Trump said he wanted it rescheduled in the next 30 days, but that proved logistically impossible.
The correspondents’ association ultimately decided to move the dinner to a new location: the Waldorf Astoria, which one of Trump’s companies operated as the Trump International Hotel during his first term.
A law enforcement official told CNN that access points are more limited at the dinner’s new location, which will help focus security.
The do-over was announced in early June, and welcomed by Trump, who wrote on Truth Social, “We cannot allow Lunatics to change our way of life, or even its scheduling.”
He added, “I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out. In any event, it will be a ‘HOT’ ticket!”
The new hotel venue has room for less than a third of the April crowd, so the do-over will look and feel different. But Jiang said it is important not to let an act of violence “have the last word.”
She told People magazine, “I don’t want images of my colleagues hiding under a table to be the last images from this year, of all years.”
So the dinner is back on, though in subdued fashion, and with an acknowledgment of the April disruption. The correspondents’ association will present awards to Secret Service police officer Victor Gonzales, who was struck in his protective vest by the gunman, and to the staff of the Washington Hilton.
Holmes Lybrand, Alejandro Jaramillo, Logan Schiciano and Betsy Klein contributed reporting.
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