Trump announced he would attend the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 25, 2026 — his first time as a sitting president, after boycotting all four years of his first term and 2025. He boasted on Truth Social that the WHCA asked him “very nicely” and “admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country, the G.O.A.T.”
The WHCA replaced the traditional comedian with mentalist Oz Pearlman — described by the NYT as “the manosphere's favorite magician” who admits relying on “embellishment and partial truths.” In 2025, the WHCA had disinvited comedian Amber Ruffin after she called the administration “kind of a bunch of murderers.”
Over 250 journalists signed an open letter demanding the WHCA “speak forcefully” about Trump's attacks on press freedom. Signatories include Dan Rather, Sam Donaldson, Ann Curry, and representatives from the National Association of Black Journalists, Freedom of the Press Foundation, and the Society of Professional Journalists.
The letter catalogs Trump's record: “retaliatory access bans, coercive regulatory investigations, frivolous lawsuits, defunding of public broadcasting, physical restrictions on journalists, personal verbal attacks on reporters, the arrest of journalists, and the pardoning of those who committed violence against the press.” It calls this “the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom of the press by a sitting American president.”
A federal judge has twice ruled the Defense Department is unconstitutionally restricting press access to administration-friendly reporters. Washington Monthly called for canceling the dinner: “A fundraising event to support the value of a free press should not have a featured speaker who is the biggest peacetime threat to the First Amendment.”