White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will skip the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner next month after early friction with the press corps.
Leavitt, who has clashed with the WHCA repeatedly over the past three months, ripped the association for running a “monetized monopoly” over White House reporting.
“I will not be in attendance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and that’s breaking news for ‘The Sean Spicer Show,’” Leavitt said on former White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s podcast Friday.
“This is a group of journalists who’ve been covering the White House for decades,” she said. “They started this organization because the presidents at the time were not doing enough press conferences. I don’t think we have that problem anymore under this president.”
The WHCA, an association of journalists who cover the White House for an array of news outlets, was formed in 1914.
Up until the second Trump administration, the WHCA had control over the rotation of White House pool reporters who get special access to the president.
Every year, the WHCA hosts a ritzy dinner for its correspondents and an assortment of famous guests. Usually the president attends the gala, but President Trump skipped it every year of his first administration.
The last time he attended, in 2011, then-President Barack Obama roasted him publicly and Trump has clashed with many of the top reporters in the WHCA.
Last month, the White House began intervening in the selection of pool reporters, prompting outrage from the WHCA. Leavitt billed the undertaking as an effort to welcome new media voices to cover the administration.
“They have not really welcomed other people, new media, independent journalists, with open arms, and so we thought it was time to expand the coverage and determine who gets to be part of that 13-person press pool, who gets to ask the president of the United States questions in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One,” she said of the WHCA.
The Trump administration made room for a new media slot in the White House pool, in part, by narrowing down the print wire service spot to a single rotating position. Previously, the Associated Press, Bloomberg and Reuters had daily access to the pool.
WHCA board president Eugene Daniel denounced the White House’s intervention in the pool reporter rotation, arguing it “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States.”
This year’s WHCA dinner is slated to take place on April 26 and will feature “Late Show with Seth Meyers” writer Amber Ruffin, who has publicly trashed Trump.
“He’s missing out on one of the cool things about being the president of the United States. But I don’t know that anyone’s looking forward to being in the same room as him,” Ruffin jabbed on CNN last month.
Trump has not publicly said yet whether or not he will attend, but is widely expected to skip the dinner.
