The troubling truth about the White House Correspondents' Dinner

The 2026 White House Correspondents' Dinner is this Saturday, so let me be blunt: If you fancy yourself a journalist, and I hear you were within a mile of this event I will cut you off cold.

Anybody who decides to share the stage with the greatest threat to a free press and the United States of America in my lifetime, the appalling Donald J. Trump, should never be allowed to carry a press pass again.

I’ve had more than enough of these phonies disgracing what was once one of the most important vocations in the world. By checking their backbones and credibility at the door to self-serving events like these, they are going out of their way to make a mockery out of the profession.

Before cutting them to pieces, and laying them bare, I will make exceptions to any so-called journalist who attends this nauseating event and makes a loud point of standing up, turning his or her back, and walking out of the place the minute Trump begins to run his big, fat mouth.

Otherwise, the rest of them can all go straight to hell.

Truth is, many people who have worked for and with me in the business over the years will know I never had a soft spot for this sort of stupid back-patting gala of me-first media elites, but tolerated it through clenched teeth.

Every person who attends this event knows full well they are doing so to make news, instead of cover it. They know that this is one of journalism’s highest crimes.

Unfortunately these days, too much of the attempted journalism I see from our corporate media is nothing but a series of high crimes.

Most of the people who will be shoving their mugs in front of the cameras Saturday night are the same lost souls who were unable to spot one of the most significant news stories in United States history — the attack on democracy — in the run-up to the 2024 election, and instead covered it like some meaningless, back-and-forth horse race.

Even they should be able to see where that has gotten us now, as our democracy teeters on the edge of extinction.

It’s absolutely perfect then, that Weijia Jiang, is the current president of the stupid association hosting this spoiled dinner. Jiang works as a correspondent at CBS “News” — the place that has made a pathetic spectacle of itself by surrendering to the man and his administration they have invited to spit all over everybody, and the notion of free speech in America.

Here was Trump’s noxious, public response to Jiang’s insane invitation last month:

Oh, well, since they asked him “very nicely ….”

How is it they STILL can’t understand they are dealing with a spoiled toddler holstering nuclear codes in his soiled diaper, who needs consequences, not coddling?

Jiang continued to outdo herself with this quote:

Sorry, and excuse my French, but what the f--- does that even mean?

Because gathering together in a ballroom and rubbing greasy elbows with a man who has called you “the enemy of the people” and your work “fake” has to be one of the weakest, most pathetic things I have ever seen.

You know what really exhibits the meaning of a free press? Holding power to account, Weijia.

Good God.

You are making it crystal clear you have zero respect for the business that I, and thousands of others gave our professional lives to. You are making fools of the journalists who paid the ultimate sacrifice by laying their lives down to tell us all what was happening on the battlefield, the storm-ravaged country, or myriad other dangerous places of upheaval around the globe.

And what of the journalists who covered the attack on the United States Capitol January 6, 2021, by the man you are honoring Saturday? The very man who has since pardoned the thugs who stomped law enforcement officers to near death and threatened to murder politicians that day.

Unless, as the ace reporters you somehow fancy yourselves, you really don’t think Trump had anything to do with the violence that day …

What is wrong with you people? Does it mean THAT much to you to fall at the fat, little feet of a sick, demented man who is trying to end us just as sure as I am typing this?

How about getting to the bottom of that, instead of some overpriced, dirty martini.

Among other heinous things, Trump has relentlessly attacked, and banned the Associated Press from the White House, defunded Public media, defended the Saudis for their brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, pulled credentials from news organization that have covered the Pentagon for years, and raped one of the most important papers in the world, Stars and Stripes, where I spent 11 years of my career.

He has called women reporters like Weijia Jiang “horrible” “stupid” “ugly” and “piggy.”

And it somehow gets worse …

From reporting in the Daily Beast Monday:

This is almost too appalling to type.

I see more than 250 former broadcast journalists, including Dan Rather, Ann Curry and Sam Donaldson, delivered a letter Monday urging the dinner’s organizers “to forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump’s efforts to trample freedom of the press.”

The letter starts this way:

It goes onto to say:

And:

I respect them, and appreciate their efforts, but doing my best folksy, deep-voiced Rather impersonation I inject this:

The truth is, the normalization of the abominable Trump by our corporate media has had a more devastating consequence to our democracy than just about anything I can think of.

They have normalized racism, abuse, toxic dishonesty, and even treason.

On Saturday they will normalize authoritarianism, by standing alongside a fascist thug, who has spent the past year-plus taking a wrecking ball to our White House, erecting statues carrying his repulsive name, and hanging banners of his ugly face from our public buildings to honor himself instead of America.

He is treating Washington D.C., like it is just another one of garish country clubs.

Or did the White House “working press” somehow miss all that on their way to honoring themselves Saturday, and forgetting who they are really supposed to serve: the American public.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)

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