Trump Wasn’t At The White House Correspondents’ Dinner — Again — But His Presence Was Felt

Paul Farhi of The Washington Post wrote:

Fancy gowns: check. Tuxedos: check. Surf and turf on the menu: Also check.

All the usual elements were there at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night, but much of the glamour and some of the fun was missing.

There was no president in attendance for the gala event, virtually no celebrities and no comedian for the first time in decades. Sensitive to President Trump’s reaction to being made fun of last year, the WHCA decided not to tempt the presidential temper again. The organization dropped the after-dinner comedy, a staple stretching back to the Bob Hope era.

Instead, the 3,000 or so attendees in the subterranean Washington Hilton ballroom got . . . a lecture from a historian.

As if that wasn’t entertainment enough, Trump sniped from the sidelines. As he has each year since his inauguration, he counter-programmed the dinner by staging a reelection rally, this one in Green Bay, Wis. “Fake news. They are fakers!” he taunted, pointing at the press assembled in the Resch Center arena, amid chants of “CNN sucks.”

In all, the once-glitzy dinner, a staple of spring in Washington, looked more like a fancy journalism-industry dinner (albeit one televised live by three cable TV networks), rather than the self-indulgent, Hollywood-on-the-Potomac glamfest of yore.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump-wasnt-at-the-white-house-correspondents-dinner--again--but-his-presence-was-felt/2019/04/27/f22de382-66aa-11e9-82ba-fcfeff232e8f_story.html?utm_term=.5b9168971584
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-wasnt-at-the-white-house-correspondents-dinner-—-again-—-but-his-presence-was-felt/ar-BBWm50h