October 1, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) — President Donald Trump addressed a huge roomful of journalists Friday night at a correspondents' dinner rescheduled from April after a shooting upended the first edition. Said the president: “As I said three months ago, the show must go on."
Trump entered the ballroom to polite applause, and was thanked for his support by White House Correspondents' Association president Weijia Jiang of CBS News. After dinner, he then sat through more than an hour of awards presentations.
“Let’s try this again,” Jiang quipped, welcoming the crowd. The White House press corps, she noted, “always has a follow-up.” Turning serious, she referred back to the trauma and confusion of the original dinner in April.
“Tonight our message is this: We are back,” she said. “We will not be intimidated. We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word.”
The rescheduled dinner was taking place in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, a smaller venue that held only about 700 people. Guests entered via a single entrance, through two ID checks, and past a detection dog, armed officers and security guards. There was no red carpet and no separate cocktail receptions preceding the dinner.
There was a change at Friday’s dinner: two additional awards. One presented to Victor Gonzales, the Secret Service agent who was staffing a security checkpoint in April and was struck in his protective vest.
“Officer Gonzales … ran toward danger so that thousands of others could make it home safely," Weijia Jiang, WHCA president, said in a statement. “His courage stemmed from a dedication to service, which we are looking forward to honoring this week.”
A second award was to be presented to the staff of the Washington Hilton hotel, site of the first dinner.
The dress code this time was a looser “black tie optional," and dinner included grilled peach and burrata salad, lobster and beef Wellington. The evening, as at the last dinner, had entertainment by mentalist Oz Pearlman, along with the awards presentations and Trump's remarks.
Jiang and her fellow board members worked hard to bring about this WHCA dinner 2.0, not wanting to let a violent act — or the image of colleagues hiding under tables — remain the final thought. Announcing the rescheduling, she emphasized the dinner’s stated purpose: “a celebration of a free press and the vital role of journalism in our democracy for over a century.”
“We will not allow an act of violence to have the last word, especially during a year when we are reflecting on the 250th anniversary of America and everything we stand for,” Jiang said.
But it’s also clear that some people felt the dinner should not be rescheduled at all.
Many never thought it was much of a good look in the first place, with the sight of journalists in formal wear cozying up to their sources, or the objects of their reporting.
“It undermines the public faith in how the press does its work, and it makes it look like we are pals with the people we cover,” Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, said when the deliberations were taking place.
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