The future of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is in doubt

The fallout from Saturday’s shooting at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner threatens to cut deep and last a long time, affecting the president, reporters and the future of the event itself. At a hastily assembled post-shooting press briefing at the White House, Donald Trump told us it was an honor to be targeted for assassination because it “only happens to the best.” Some Washington reporters left the event shaken, while some were convinced they were heroes for surviving. Others left determined to still have some fun. The White House Correspondents’ Association faces the possibility that we have seen the last dinner under the current format. 

The dinner was interrupted when a 31-year-old California man armed with a shotgun, a handgun and a knife opened fire after sprinting past the security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton. The president, Vice President JD Vance, First Lady Melania Trump, and Cabinet members and their families were quickly evacuated.

After the shots rang out, a good friend of mine, fearing the worst, went on an immediate search to find his wife. They had become separated because of the untimely need of a restroom visit, and with the help of the Secret Service he got to her quickly. She was under a table, safe. While making his way through the ballroom he came across reporters ducking for cover and some jockeying for position with their phone cameras. One told my friend that he was blocking his live video. While most attendees left quickly in an orderly fashion, one guy sat calmly and ate his salad; he’d obviously seen a few things in his life. Some reporters stayed. Some worked the story, and others just went to the after-parties. As CBS’s Ed O’Keefe posted on social media, “We did manage to have a little fun Saturday night.”

Sometime in the next 20 years, many who were there — and a few who will claim they were but weren’t — will begin telling tales of great heroism, imagined, yearned for and not actually achieved. Then there’s CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. He got a jump on everyone and is already doing it.  

Donald Trump used the opportunity to call that press conference in the Brady Briefing Room a short time later. There he insulted the usual suspects, applauded the WHCA president, claimed he was never in any serious danger from the “incompetent” shooter and praised the Secret Service, who wrestled the shooter to the ground. But his real purpose appeared to be using the situation to promote his “Big Beautiful Ballroom.”

Because of his calm, if not befuddled, demeanor at the event, Trump fans have already re-anointed him as the best president in the history of the United States. Some think he’s the “best president in the history of the world,” and say it with a straight face. “The president feeds off of that,” a source close to Trump told me. “He thinks he’s the most important president ever and can do anything he wants anytime he wants.” Others claim he has called himself the “most powerful person to ever live,” and privately compares himself to Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. 

Talk of ending the traditional dinner described by some wags as the quintessential glitzy Washington, D.C., event is growing. While the nation’s capital is filled with pretentious individuals who love to inhale their own fumes, the Oscars this ain’t. When James Carville and Paul Begala said that “Washington is Hollywood for ugly people,” they were describing the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Everyone is there to be seen and feel great about themselves. It’s about access, acceptance and ample fun; a splendid time is guaranteed for all. Everyone should have the experience once. Unfortunately, repeated exposure falsely increases one’s sense of self-worth.

While Trump has said the dinner will be rescheduled within 30 days, it is doubtful this will happen. Rescheduling the event so quickly would be a logistical nightmare, if it could be done at all. You can’t wave a magic wand and get it done. Trump thinks he can. Never mind that it isn’t even his party to reschedule. It belongs to the WHCA.

The future of the dinner is in doubt for a variety of reasons, but security concerns rank the highest. During the last few years, government buildings have become less accessible to the public “in response to rising security threats.” That certainly says something about our society. Hotels like the Washington Hilton have the appeal of easy access — a fact exploited Saturday evening by a man who wished to commit a horrific crime. WHCA board members are reportedly considering a variety of options to “fix the dinner” and are having “serious discussions” about it. One would hope so. 

It’s not just security. Many in the WHCA believe the very reason for the dinner’s existence has been lost. Few want to end it; not even Trump, who wants to hijack it, put his name on it and hold it in his ballroom. But several members of the WHCA are proposing common-sense changes. Steve Herman, a college professor and former WHCA member, recommends canning the entertainers and limiting the appearance of presidents to those out of office while also putting award recipients, including the scholarship winners, at the head table.

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He has a point. The reason for the annual dinner is to honor exceptional reporting and student journalists. It would be nice to see us actually celebrate the First Amendment instead of giving lip service to it. The downside is the dinner might make less money for scholarships if it isn’t glitzy enough.

I’d keep the entertainment, but find a good comedian who can host a major live event. They exist. But as the knight in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” warned, we should “choose wisely.” (Hint: That’s a really tough room for a comedian. Pay for and get the best.)

This year the WHCA dinner was a uniquely hot, American mess exploited by everyone involved. The gunman exploited an opportunity to get some attention with the chance of dying in what he thought would be a blaze of selfish glory. Members of the press took advantage of the chance to create what some would argue was an overly dramatic story. Republicans used the situation to link an obviously mentally disturbed individual to Democratic politics. Democrats took the opportunity to scream “conspiracy.” Rather than hold an individual accountable for his actions, some of us are apparently blaming political differences for driving people insane. Trump exploited the event to sell us a ballroom. And there we are: Exploitation is the currency by which we purchase what we want in this country. Facts and reality be damned. 

Clearly the WHCA dinner should change. If we stand for the First Amendment, then we should celebrate it and promote it. Waj Ali, a former member of corporate media who is now a leading voice in independent media, says it will never happen. “The dinner should end and they should be mocked and ridiculed,” he told me. “They are an example of an ossified, cancerous corporate media.” 

Millions of Americans apparently share his opinion about corporate media. Many members of the GOP side with Ali on the feckless nature of the press, and would also like to end the dinner. Of course many have said this in the past — until they got a chance to go to the dinner. There’s the rub. The WHCD is a social aphrodisiac.  

And while reporters played hero along with the politicians this year, here’s a wakeup call: We’ve had 155 mass shootings in this country in the first 119 days of this year. The average inner-city and rural teenager are more acquainted with the sound of firearms, albeit for different reasons, than the politicians and press living in the D.C. bubble. We keep being told that “now isn’t the time” to discuss firearms safety or legislation, but it is always time to blame partisan politics for the violence —and the reporters wanting access are along for the ride.

In many ways, the WHCD is a microcosm of everything wrong in the country. Rank-and-file reporters, producers and editors often don’t get a chance to attend the high-priced event, while high-ranking politicians, celebrities and television anchors who don’t cover the White House often do. The event’s mission is buried while its exploitation continues to be valuable currency. 

The shooting made that currency so valuable this year that the president and first lady were able to use it to condemn Jimmy Kimmel because they didn’t like a joke the late-night host made about her days before the WHCD. Now the weaponized Federal Communications Commission, led by Brendan Carr, has ordered a review of all the station licenses owned by ABC. That’s exploitation taken to the next level. 

Trump’s interference with the press, according to a study from Reporters Without Borders, is helping to destroy it. Released this week, the organization’s 2026 press freedom report also shows how a free press is becoming increasingly problematic across the world as a result. The United States now ranks 64th in press freedom among all nations — our lowest ranking in the 25 years RSF has published its findings. 

Trump congratulated the WHCA board president for her actions Saturday and intimated that their shared trauma would make for better press relations. But the very next day Trump called “60 Minutes” correspondent Norah O’Donnell a “disgrace” when she read the attempted assassin’s manifesto to the president for comment. He nearly lost it when she asked him his reaction to the shooter’s statement, which read in part, “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” Trump said he knew she would read that to him and ask for his response because “you’re horrible people.” He really does think he’s a Caesar. 

Presidential Pep Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed the president on Monday and also decried Democrats and their “crazed rhetoric” for the violence. No one in the press corps pushed back. Some, like at the WHCD, were taking selfies. 

It sure would be nice if we actually did our job. The world is burning and everyone is exploiting it for their own gain. We’re taking selfies, Trump is blaming Democrats, Democrats are blaming Republicans and everyone else sounds like a ranking GOP member I spoke with this week who asked “When is this s**t going to end?”