For an hour and four minutes on Friday night, the president stood at a podium in a hotel he used to own and used the White House press corps as a prop. The irony of staging a White House Correspondents’ Dinner in the presence of a man actively working to dismantle the First Amendment protections of the very press he was ostensibly there to honor is almost too thick. To no one’s surprise, Donald Trump used the event as a campaign rally and personal vendetta, targeting CNN’s chief White House correspondent and anchor Kaitlan Collins with misogynistic, transphobic “jokes,” and capping the night with a “Trump 2028” hat — an authoritarian flourish masquerading as humor.
The press stayed seated and silent.
