President Trump is set to feast on the “fake news” media Saturday night when he attends his first White House Correspondents’ dinner as commander-in-chief.
Despite turning down invitations to the annual event throughout his first term and last year, the president appeared to be eager for dishing out a roast, repeatedly prodding reporters at the White House this week.
“You’re such a disgrace,” he told one on Thursday.
The appearance gives Trump his chance to put his mark on the dinner, after famously serving as the repeated butt of former President Barack Obama’s jokes during his 2011 routine – a skewering that is said to have solidified the billionaire’s decision to seek the White House.
“It’s really the place where the Trump presidency was born. I wonder if Obama will be in the crowd to heckle him,” longtime Republican operative John Feehery told The Post Friday.
The event “should be great theater,” Feehery predicted. “I think the mutual contempt between the president and the media will be palpable, but there also has to be a deeper understanding that they need each other to survive.”
The president has said he “loved” the 2011 event, which he attended as a guest of the Washington Post.
Obama was on Trump’s mind Saturday.
He posted an image on Truth Social of what an updated reflecting pool on the National Mall will look like under the heading “Trump,” side-by-side with a dingy image labeled “Hussein Obama.”
Cable networks were touting the clash more than 24 hours in advance, with reports Trump might seize the microphone for more than an hour – a move that would allow him to tweak the reporters who regularly confront him before a nationwide C-SPAN audience.
Trump started his day Saturday at Mar-a-Lago, where he was to host a cryptocurrency event before heading back to Washington.
After an afternoon departure on Air Force One along with a small pool of White House reporters who cover him, Trump will head to the Washington Hilton, which hosts the glitzy black-tie affair and has the largest ballroom in DC, holding more than 4,000 people.
Powerbrokers and media execs have been arriving in DC in advance, with embassies playing host to a series of parties that make up what has grown to become White House correspondents’ weekend – sometimes mocked as “nerd prom.”
Trump’s appearance is generating even more buzz than usual. He has repeatedly gone after what he calls the “fake news,” has sued major media outlets for billions, and banned the Associated Press from his press pool when its style book said it would refer to the “Gulf of Mexico” and not Trump’s “Gulf of America.”
At the same time, he has provided extraordinary access to reporters inside the Oval Office and other venues during regular interactions.
The White House Correspondents’ Association signaled temporary truce by inviting Israeli “mentalist” Oz Pearlman, who was set to wow the crowd with mind-reading demonstrations rather than roast the president in a role typically held by a comedian or talk show host.
But the awards being given out to journalists were expected to rub the president the wrong way, and the White House refused to confirm beforehand that he would remain to view their traditional presentation.
“I know the President is very much looking forward to it,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at the White House on Friday. “His speech will be very entertaining, that is what I will tell you. So everyone should tune in.”
“So now he’s president and now he gets to go back,” she told Meghan McCain’s Citizen McCain podcast.
“I think everyone should get ready because he’s going to do some roasting, and we know that he doesn’t hold anything back,” she continued. “He’s got some great people who he’s tapping to help him with this, but he comes up with a lot of good material.”
