This is posted on a whim.
As many are aware, the White House Correspondents Association holds an annual black tie dinner on the last Saturday every April, and for many years it was attended by Presidents of the United States of both parties. These affairs generally involved gentle jibing by Chief Executive at the White House Press Corps covering him, and the Correspondents’ (generally) good-natured ribbing of the President in response.
President Donald Trump did not attend any of the four Correspondents’ Dinners during his first term, and skipped last year’s, the first of his second term.
He’s going tonight.
Here’s the surmise – one that if it hadn’t already occurred to you when you started reading this note a few seconds ago, probably has now:
Mr. Trump wants to start a fight. He knows that except for perhaps the few days after he incited the January 6, 2021, attack on our nation’s Capitol building, he is as unpopular with the entirety of the American people as he has ever been, he’s mired in a war of his own making that is exacerbating Americans’ financial straits, and he wants to be attacked by the Correspondents – whom he recognizes are no more popular than he is — in a manner that can be portrayed as disrespectful in the alt-right media silo inhabited by his now-wavering supporters. I am confident that Mr. Trump and his media advisors well recall that at the 2018 Dinner, the ribbing of then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (now the Governor of Arkansas) was not good-natured, was considered in retrospect personally disrespectful, was described by even left-leaning observers as “over the line,” a “take down.” It was not a good look for the press. I expect Mr. Trump to attempt to provoke the media in his remarks with the full litany of his normal attacks – “fake,” lying,” “failing,” “enemies of the people,” etc., etc. etc.
While Mr. Trump’s potential ploy is readily predictable, I hope – and have some confidence – that the Washington Press Corps will be too savvy to take the bait. It probably regretted (as I recall, it should have) the treatment Ms. Sanders received at the 2018 Dinner, and the correspondents undoubtedly recognize what Mr. Trump is more than likely to be up to. In the moment, a tongue lashing from Mr. Trump will be uncomfortable, but it’s hard to conceive of him saying anything he hasn’t said before; if the reporters don’t respond provocatively, his speech is a one-day story – tomorrow, a Sunday in spring when nobody watches media anyway – and it’s gone Monday. If they take the bait and respond combatively, that becomes the story, and gives him the rallying point – the distraction — for his supporters that right now he desperately needs.
We’ll see what happens.
McCoy's Noise 