‘Just Us’: Media Elite Holds Annual Washington Gala Sans President, Comic, Hollywood Stars

A chorus line of past presidents from past years showed up via old video to give an edited mash-up speech, but there was no current POTUS, no VP, no roast by a comedian and few Hollywood power players at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner tonight in Washington DC.

Yet, with Donald Trump still yet to make his WHCD debut as president, White House Correspondents’ Association president Eugene Daniels had no intention of burying the lede Saturday of the barricades up between the current White House and institutional media in America.

“We journalists are a lot of things,“ Daniels exclaimed to a standing ovation in his First Amendment celebrating closing remarks on this 96th day of Trump 2.0. “What we are not is the opposition. What we are not is the enemy of the people, and what we are not is the enemy of the state.”

Ending the WHCD earlier than in past years, Daniels opened his comments by addressing the elephant not in the Washington Hilton ballroom: “Every year we invite the president to this dinner. For decades, presidents on both sides of the political spectrum get gussied up and join us. I want to be clear about something, we don’t invite presidents of the United States to this because it’s for them. We don’t invite them because we want to cozy up to them or curry favor.

“We don’t only extend invites to the presidents who say they love journalists or who say they are defenders of the First Amendment in a free press. We invite them to remind them that they should be. We invite them to demonstrate that those of us who have chosen the public service of journalism aren’t doing it because we love flights on Air Force One or walking into the Oval Office. It is to remind them why a strong Fourth Estate is essential for democracy.”