In April, before the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, there was a sense that President Donald Trump intended to strike a softer note — perhaps even to extend an olive branch to the Press.
What he planned to say will remain unknown.
The event, a celebration of Press freedom, was abruptly brought to a halt by a shooter. Trump never delivered his prepared remarks, but in the Press conference that followed, still wearing his tuxedo, he found room to speak generously about journalists.
By Friday night, however, the tone had changed completely. Complaining under his breath that the speech he had been handed was ‘fricking stupid’, Trump cast it aside and spent much of the next hour wandering through jokes that landed as personal attacks. One female CNN anchor was criticised for not ‘smile’; another journalist, from the Wall Street Journal, was dismissed as ‘un-hireable’.
The room responded with audible shock and long stretches of uneasy quiet. Trump’s hostility toward journalists is hardly unfamiliar, but what made the moment remarkable was the setting: an event that has traditionally functioned as a good-natured truce between presidents and the Fourth Estate.
As the BBC’s chief Washington correspondent and North America Editor, I attended these dinners during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
In 2015, taking aim at congressional gridlock, Obama quipped: ‘I want to especially thank all the members who took a break from their exhausting schedule of not passing any laws to be here tonight.’
The humour then was light, and it cut both ways, with the president accepting the teasing as part of the ritual. The evening carried a distinctly Hollywood sheen, drawing figures such as Henry Kissinger, invariably accompanied by a glamorous woman.
Donald Trump throws a ‘Trump 2028′ cap at the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) Dinner
One of the great criticisms, in fact, was that it was a little too cosy, with political correspondents being so pally with the very governments they were supposed to be scrutinising. Of course, it could be uncomfortable: in Bill Clinton’s time, he was being investigated for all sorts of things by the journalists he was chummily handing out awards to. As president, you you have to be able to take it.
But the thing about Trump is he rarely can. This year is the first time he attended as President – he has never previously bothered.
The last time Trump was there, as a guest of the Wall Street Journal in 2011, then-President Obama poked fun at him for questioning the legitimacy of his US citizenship, and for Trump’s stint on The Apprentice.
It’s been suggested – although Trump has denied it – that he was so upset by that roasting that he decided to run for the White House there and then. Interestingly, at Friday’s dinner – which Trump quipped was ‘far worse than I actually thought’ – the traditional comedian was swapped for a conjurer. A specific request by Trump or because the organisers thought better of it? That isn’t clear.
But he can be funny about himself if he chooses to be. At the Al Smith dinner, put on by the Catholic Church in New York and held just before the presidential election in 2024, he started off by saying: ‘It’s a true pleasure to be with you. These days, it’s a pleasure to be anywhere in New York without a subpoena for my appearance.’
He was under huge pressure at the time over withheld government documents, and it was genuinely funny. So there is a legitimate question over why, as Trump’s poll ratings continue to plummet and the Republicans face a drubbing in the November mid-terms, he chose not to use the speech on Friday as a political opportunity.
That he didn’t does worry some of his more thoughtful supporters and begs another question: what was he trying to achieve?
It would be too simplistic to say it’s just about contempt for the Press. He has reason not to like journalists, but he still does business with publications he so roundly criticises.
Mr Trump is pictured during a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the Oval Office on July 21
It could be that he doesn’t care about doing the politically adept thing. But there is another possibility – that he doesn’t know just how bad things have got.
That is possible for a president. Joe Biden genuinely seemed to think he could win the 2024 election, and during the last days of his administration, a coterie of people was telling him not to believe the polls, that they were all nonsense.
Trump is, after all, surrounded by a band of staunch supporters. This is a man who enormously enjoys success and can’t face up to any kind of failure. If the Republicans do badly in the mid-terms, that will reflect badly on him.
He has surprised us before with against-the-odds comebacks. The question now is that, at 80, does he still have the energy and focus to turn it all around again, and leave a positive legacy in his last couple of years as president?
As he battles a seemingly never- ending war with Iran, he’ll certainly need that conjurer.
