President Donald Trump and Weijia Jiang watch as Oz Pearlman performs at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Washington DC, on Friday, July 24, 2026, in Washington.
| Photo Credit: AP
President Donald Trump addressed a huge roomful of journalists on Friday (July 24, 2026) night at a correspondents’ dinner rescheduled from April after a shooting upended the first edition. “As I said three months ago, the show must go on,” said Mr, Trump.
Mr. 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 — including many for journalists who had done pointed stories about him and his administration during the previous year.
“Let’s try this again,” Ms. 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.
He was widely expected to bring the fighting words — “rather nasty,” he said — against the press that he’d planned to deliver in April before the event descended into chaos when a gunman stormed a security checkpoint, forcing an evacuation of the room. But early in his speech, Mr. Trump signalled that he had scrapped his planned remarks and was going to deliver a mix of things.
“This is really the largest group of Trump Derangement Syndrome’ people put together at one time,” the President said.
As for Mr. Trump himself, he indicated last month he wasn’t sure. “I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out,” the Republican president wrote on his Truth Social platform. “In any event, it will be a HOT’ ticket!” Besides the pared-down approach, there was another 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.
Published – July 25, 2026 11:10 am IST
