United States President Donald Trump returned to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, three months after a gunman upended the event.
“As I said three months ago, the show must go on,” Trump said at the start of his speech on Friday, after a lengthy awards ceremony, during which several journalists, including CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, spoke.
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The annual – and perennially controversial – event had originally been held in April, but it was swiftly derailed after a gunman attempted to storm the proceedings in an alleged effort to assassinate Trump.
“Just like my presidency, the second time is always better and the third time will be better yet,” Trump quipped, before raising his hands at the crowd and saying, “I’m only kidding.”
The US president is limited to two terms by the Constitution, but Trump has been facetiously floating the idea of running for a third time.
The rescheduled dinner took place in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, with a guest list of 700 people, much smaller compared with April’s botched gathering.
“It was an assault on our democracy itself; it was a very serious situation,” Trump said of the alleged assassination attempt.
He lauded some of his aides, including Pete Hegseth, Steve Miller and Tom Holman, for showing “bravery” during the incident.
“They were standing on tables, when most of you were under the tables,” he said.
Alleged gunman Cole Tomas Allen had stormed a security gate at the gala venue, the Washington Hilton, armed with guns and knives. He was accused by prosecutors of shooting and injuring a Secret Service officer before he was stopped.
Allen is facing federal charges of attempting to assassinate the president.
“Many people yelled, ‘Get down. Get down,’ which caused Nicki Minaj to start twerking,” Trump said on Friday.
As journalists in attendance forced a muted laugh, Trump added: “She’s the only one who knew what that meant.”
Trump later used the event to rebuke political opponents, presenting his attacks as jokes. He called Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom “newscum”, questioned Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s intelligence, and pretended that someone in the audience was calling Illinois Governor JB Pritzker a “fat pig” to appear that he was not uttering the insult himself.
The US president also called top Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer “Palestinian” as an insult.
Earlier in the evening, Trump entered the ballroom to polite applause.
“This is the largest gathering of people with Trump derangement syndrome,” he said, referring to journalists.
The US president has had a historically caustic relationship with the dinner, but this year, he touted the celebration this year, calling it a “very good thing” and a “HOT ticket”.
White House Correspondents’ Association president Weijia Jiang of CBS News, which was acquired by pro-Israel investor David Ellison last year, thanked Trump for his support, and for showing up for the second time in three months.
“Tonight our message is this: We are back,” she said. “We will not be intimidated. We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word.”
Trump’s enthused attendance represented a sea change from his first term, beginning in 2017, when the newly elected president declared the soiree “dead” and declined to attend over the next four years.
Beyond Trump, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has long been a lightning rod for criticism among media professionals, with some journalists arguing that reporters should not be chummy with the politicians they cover. Calls for the dinner to be abandoned entirely only grew after the April incident.