Top NYT journo calls on reporters to rethink White House Correspondents Dinner after Trump dares to clap back
It apparently wasn’t anti-Trump enough for him.The New York Times’ chief White House correspondent is urging the White House Correspondents Association to “rethink” its annual dinner after President Trump dared to follow tradition and roasted press there.During the ritzy WHCD redo Friday, the back-patting association doled out awards to reporters for stories fiercely critical of Trump, including his past association with late sex predator Jeffrey EpsteinTrump shook the hands of the journalists who worked on those scathing stories on him and sat through criticisms of his lawsuits against media outlets.But the prez eventually fired back with jabs of his own at the press, as his predecessors have been doing for years as part of the established format.The Times’ top White House correspondent, Peter Baker, apparently did not approve of what went down.“Have been a member of the [WHCA] almost continuously since the 1990s.Our mission is to defend the First Amendment rights of White House correspondents to report on the president without fear or favor,” Baker posted on X on Saturday.“Unfortunately last night did not advance that cause.
Time to rethink the dinner.”The veteran reporter, who has frequently been a tough scrutinizer of Trump, also reposted a head-scratching X post from his wife, Susan Glasser, after the dinner that seemingly scolded journalists who participated for failing to defend the First Amendment somehow.“If journalists won’t stand up for it, hard to ask everyone else to,” Glasser wrote.Throughout the president’s second term in office, some prominent reporters have blasted the press for trying to be more neutral than the coverage of his first term and not being more aggressively anti-Trump.Trump had skipped all previous White House Correspondents’ Dinners, breaking his boycott in April during the dinner that was interrupted by a shooting attempt by suspect Cole Tomas Allen, who has been charged.During Friday’s redo of th...