Trump in 2011
Rick Friedman / Getty Images
Donald Trump tweeted Saturday that he is skipping the White House Correspondents Association dinner amid the most tense relationship between a sitting president and the press corps since the Nixon era.
Trump, who in the past few weeks has taken to calling media outlets who write pieces critical of his administration the "enemy of the American people" added, "please wish everyone well and have a great evening!"
The annual, celebrity-studded WHCA dinner has long been criticized as a display of too-cozy relations between the media and people they are supposed to cover fairly and critically. It usually involves a comedian or master of ceremonies roasting the president, and then president responding in kind. The proceeds go to scholarships. (Some outlets, choose not to attend the event. For example, the New York Times stopped going in 2007 and BuzzFeed News does not go.)
This year's dinner posed a particularly sticky situation for both the White House and the media. Trump, while on the campaign trail, would condone chants of "CNN sucks!" at his rallies and sometimes called out specific reporters. That later developed into Trump adopting and using the term "fake news" for any article — generally published in the mainstream media — he didn't like.
That only intensified when he entered office. He began calling some outlets — namely, The New York Times, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News and CNN — "the enemy of the American people," which is unprecedented vitriol.
Earlier this month, the New Yorker, canceled its kickoff party and Vanity Fair said it was dropping out of sponsoring its exclusive after-party. This week, Bloomberg, Vanity Fair's co-host, also dropped out. And on Friday BuzzFeed News reported that CNN was considering skipping the dinner all together.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/2lWj9WK
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