Trump attends the White House Correspondents' Dinner for the first time as President, facing a joint protest from over 250 journalists.

BlockBeats News, April 26 — On the evening of April 25, local time, the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) annual dinner, which was attacked by gunfire, marked President Trump’s first attendance at this century-old tradition as President of the United States. Trump previously refused to attend the dinner for four consecutive years during his first term (2017–2020). When he skipped it in 2017, he became the first sitting U.S. president to miss the dinner since Ronald Reagan was hospitalized with gunshot injuries due to an assassination attempt in 1981. That year, he instead held a rally in Pennsylvania, denouncing mainstream media as “fake news.” In his first year after taking office for his second term (2025), he also continued to skip the event. Notably, Trump had attended the dinner before as a private guest in 2011 (the year of the famous Obama joke about him) and in 2015.

On the eve of the dinner, more than 250 journalists, including former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather, former ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson, and former NBC anchor Ann Curry, jointly signed a public letter saying that Trump’s “systematic, sustained, unprecedented attacks” on the news industry made his attendance at this year’s dinner “deeply at odds with the dinner’s purpose,” calling on colleagues to “mount a strong counterattack.” The dinner was ultimately interrupted due to the gunfire incident. Trump and members of his cabinet were urgently evacuated and will reschedule the event within 30 days.