The president keeps suggesting to journalists that they throw a party at his house. This is a very bad idea.
Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House, April 25, 2026.
(Al Drago/Getty Images) In the wake of the attempted assassination of President Trump, outsiders in Washington may feel a veiled threat over the White House Correspondents’ Association’s long-standing insistence on holding its annual gala at the Washington Hilton. After all, this is the hotel where, in 1981, John Hinckley Jr. tried to impress Jodie Foster by shooting Ronald Reagan—not an association you’d think Beltway bigwigs would want to join. In fact, the so-called “Hinckley Hilton” is one of the only spaces in Washington large enough to accommodate a dinner party of 2,000 or more.
Not that a reporter covering a president wants violence; the metaphor of who is actually welcome at the dinner party should rather appeal to the doctrine-loving MAGA Republicans in the castle. When the president is invited to dinner by the press at the Hilton, she sends a message: you are on our turf and at our pleasure; the invitation can be canceled.
There’s power in an invitation, as the owner of Mar-a-Lago surely knows.
Now, after last weekend’s incident, Trump and his MAGA allies have been push for future White House Correspondents’ Association dinners will be held on her lawn, in the still legendary ballroom for which the president demolished part of the White House to build it. But it’s a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
For one thing, the Hilton’s security cordon didn’t fail. The would-be assassin was shot at the first barricade he encountered. It’s not even clear that he got away with it more than once (It is not even clear that he hit someone). The Secret Service determined how close to the president they would allow someone with a gun to approach. That’s where they installed the magnetometers. This is where Cole Allen was arrested. The system worked exactly as it should be.
But Trump has never encountered a functioning system he hasn’t tried to break — and the real motivation for his suggestion to take dinner in-house is not security, but control.
Current number
The metaphor of watchful hospitality should be on everyone’s minds whenever Trump or his acolytes bleat about moving the Correspondents’ Dinner to its metastasizing monstrosity, because the change of venue would completely reverse the current roles: The press, nominally celebrating its independence, would be the president’s guests in the nation’s best-guarded private residence. If he decides someone needs to leave, he has plenty of guns on them when he demands they leave.
The problem of who invites whom to dinner is both logistical and ideological (as are most logistical questions). Currently, the new ballroom is expected to accommodate 1,000 people, about half the number of guests the WHCA usually invites. Trump may already be considering using the WHCD as an excuse to further expand his pet project, but even if the gilding and plastering were to accommodate 5,000 people, there would still be a problem. Indeed, the number of guests does not matter as much as who decides who those guests will be.
Another nagging question: if the president is the host, who is financing the whole affair? Mainstream media prevent their correspondents from accepting anything from the officials or candidates they cover. White House Asks Reporters to Fly on Air Force One; journalists even have to pay $50 for each meal they eat on the plane. A news organization covering the president during a travel abroad may end up paying the White House travel office $100,000 or more for the (questionable) privilege, including theft, temporary office space near venues, hotels and even wifi. Will they pay to dine at the White House? Or will they make the ethically questionable decision to party at the president’s expense?
Remember: WHCD is probably a fundraiser on top of a spring-lube fest, and already the margins are incredibly thin. A Columbia Journalism Review analysis in 2018, the 2017 dinner was found to cost over $500,000 to host and grossed $800,000 (largely from ticket and table sales). Some of that money (about $102,000) went to scholarships, but most of it went to fund the operating costs of the association, which exists primarily to coordinate media coverage of the White House, sponsor programs such as panels and lunches and, not coincidentally, host the dinner itself. This year, the WHCA announcement that it had awarded $156,000 in scholarships, “the highest amount since the scholarships were launched more than three decades ago.” But, adjusted for inflation, it’s about the same as 10 years ago.
(CJR asked the association’s official whether the event could actually be described as a scholarship event, given this split, and was told that the website’s description from that year was “out of date.” The current description states more clearly“Our annual dinner is our main source of income to finance all our work. “)
There is no compensation agreement when the White House hosts the event that is not fraught with conflict. The idea that taxpayers should fund the dinner is far-fetched. It would be inappropriate, to say the least, for the president to donate such a large amount of money (over $1 million adjusted for inflation) to a news organization to fund his own media coverage. The White House is setting its own price for providing space, staff, equipment and meals, which invites gouging. It’s hard to say which arrangement pleases Trump most.
The fact that Trump could imagine welcoming the association shows once again Trump’s cleverness in breaking down the artifices of traditional relationships in Washington. After boycotting the dinner for years, Trump’s visit this weekend sparked such affection for the event that he made its perpetuation a personal cause. Like he says Norah O’Donnell on 60 minutes The following Sunday, “I think they were happy to see me there, actually… There was spirit in that room. I mean, it was like the whole country was together. It was pretty amazing. It made a big impression. It was very nice to see.”
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Trump’s newfound passion for press social engagement, and his insistence that “the show must go on,” has less to do with the courage to “go on” than with “the show.” It’s not about the assassination at all, but rather his joyful discovery of the truth about the real purpose of the Correspondents’ Dinner: flattery and pomp. After Barack Obama made fun of his birth conspiracy In 2011, Trump could only stand to go there again for the next 15 years. He is now ready to take a permanent seat. A light roast caused him more post-traumatic stress than a gunman who stormed the event with the intent to kill.
The association itself has been unduly and respectfully silent about the potential new arrangement; it’s hard to believe that White House reporters aren’t dramatizing their newly enriched trauma bond. Perhaps they think that a nod in either direction, accept or reject, would be interpreted as “political”, and they’re not wrong: it’s just that there is only one answer that is equally correct. You don’t eat where you shit, although the White House press corps does far too little shit in the briefing room these days.
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Ana Marie Cox Ana Marie Cox is a writer based in Austin, Texas
