White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland on February 21, 2025 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
When the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) was founded back in 1914 during Democrat Woodrow Wilson's presidency, the idea was to have an organization of journalists who covered the White House but were independent of it. Seven years later, the WHCA's annual dinner was founded, and the first president who attended was Republican Calvin Coolidge in 1924.
After that, every U.S. president from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama attended the dinner — until Donald Trump became the first exception.
In a biting op-ed published by The Hill on April 25, veteran journalist Owen Ullmann argues that the dinner and the WHCA shouldn't honor Trump in light of his disdain for the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
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"Now is the time to stop breaking bread with the Trump Administration, starting with tomorrow's White House Correspondents Association dinner," Ullmann writes. "Trump and his administration's acolytes have made clear they have no respect for the First Amendment, traditional news media, fair reporting or the truth these organizations reveal to the American public. Trump, the first president to skip the dinner during his first term, previously labeled mainstream media 'the enemy of the people,' and in February, started barring the Associated Press from attending some White House events, because its influential style book would not officially rename the Gulf of Mexico the 'Gulf of America,' as Trump insists it be called."
The Trump Administration, Ullmann laments, is "borrowing a tactic used by authoritarian leaders in other countries" when it gives preference to "friendly" reporters at the White House.
"In another chilling move against free speech," Ullmann observes, "the (Trump) Administration has detained and is deporting foreign nationals who are in the U.S. legally because it doesn't like their views in support of Palestinians in Gaza or other causes that displease the Trump crowd. In view of such behavior, the White House Correspondents Association would mock the very reason it was established, were it to hold the dinner this spring with Trump enablers in attendance — even if Trump himself boycotts the event again."
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Owen Ullmann's full op-ed for The Hill is available at this link.