WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump poked fun at the press and honored the Secret Service for \u200bprotecting him at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner on Friday, returning to the event celebrating press freedom after a shooting forced the suspension of the original event in April.<\/p>\n
Trump, whose administration has often been at odds with the press, started his speech by mostly going along with the warm and relaxed tenor of the evening, alternately mixing friendly jokes with pointed criticism of what he calls the \u201cfake news media.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he also could not resist taking cracks at his political adversaries in the press and show business, singling out for personal attacks journalists such as Don Lemon and Lawrence O\u2019Donnell, politicians like Chris Christie and Adam Schiff, \u200cand celebrities including Bruce \u200cSpringsteen and Jane Fonda.<\/p>\n
Trump suggested he was going easy on the \u200bpress \u200cafter \u2060he had planned \u200ba \u2060more fierce criticism last time around.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis place is really the largest group of Trump derangement syndrome people ever put together at one time,\u201d he said. \u201cI suspect some of you are lucky that our last dinner was cut short because \u2026 I was going to go after you.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s dual events marked Trump\u2019s first presidential appearance at the correspondents\u2019 dinner. He had boycotted the event in his previous years in office, though he promised to come back next year.<\/p>\n
Press freedom advocates have criticized the Trump administration over lawsuits it has filed against media organizations, restrictions \u2060on some journalists\u2019 access, and threats of action against broadcasters. He rejects the criticism, \u200csaying his administration is promoting accountability and addressing bias.<\/p>\n
The black-tie gathering \u200cof journalists, politicians and administration officials at the Washington Hilton hotel \u200bwas called off on April 25 after a man \u200ctried to force his way through a security checkpoint and fired a shotgun outside the ballroom where \u200cTrump and members of his cabinet were taking their seats.<\/p>\n
The suspect, Cole Allen, pleaded not guilty in May to charges including attempting to assassinate the president.<\/p>\n
The dinner was moved to a smaller venue at the Waldorf Astoria hotel under heightened security, and one of the first messages of the night was defiance in the face of the assault.<\/p>\n
\u201cTonight, our \u200cmessage is this: We are back. We will not be intimidated. We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word,\u201d said the \u2060outgoing president of the \u2060White House Correspondents\u2019 Association, Weijia Jiang of CBS News.<\/p>\n
Trump later said, \u201cWe do not yield to political violence … No deranged loser with a gun will ever change that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The event also honored Secret Service officer Victor Gonzales, who was shot at a security checkpoint outside the ballroom in April and is credited with stopping the attack, and the Washington Hilton staff who assisted guests. Gonzales was wearing a protective vest and was the only person wounded that night.<\/p>\n
The gala \u2013 an annual fixture on Washington\u2019s calendar for more than a century \u2013 raises money for journalism scholarships and celebrates press freedoms as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.<\/p>\n
It normally features a comedian who pokes fun at the president and the press, but this year\u2019s entertainment came from mentalist Oz Pearlman.<\/p>\n
Trump punctuated his speech with a few jokes, telling journalists, \u201cI know it was not easy \u200bfinding shoes to go along with your bulletproof vest, \u200bwhich many people didn\u2019t want to wear because they\u2019d rather die than look 20 pounds heavier.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump poked fun at the press and honored the Secret Service for \u200bprotecting him at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner on Friday, returning to the event celebrating press freedom after a shooting forced the suspension of the original event in April. Trump, whose administration has often been at odds with the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":100781,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100783,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100763\/revisions\/100783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}