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By WILL WEISSERT
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he’ll attend this year’s White House Correspondent Association dinner on April 25, marking the first time he’s done so as commander-in-chief.
“The White House Correspondents Association has asked me, very nicely, to be the Honoree at this year’s Dinner, a long and storied tradition since it began in 1924, under then President Calvin Coolidge,” Trump posted on his social media site on Monday evening.
He noted that the latest installment comes amid celebrations marking America’s 250th birthday, adding that it “will be my Honor to accept their invitation.”
Trump was invited annually, but never attended the dinner during his first term and also skipped last year’s gathering.
“For more than 100 years, the journalists of the White House Correspondents’ Association have enjoyed an evening with the president,” the association’s president, Weijia Jiang, said in a statement. “We’re happy the president has accepted our invitation and look forward to hosting him.”
The event was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021, but President Joe Biden attended each of the dinners during his term’s final three years. Every president since Coolidge had attended except Trump — until now. In his post Trump wrote that, “Because the Press was extraordinarily bad to me” he had “boycotted the event, and never went.”
“However, I look forward to being with everyone this year. Hopefully, it will be something very Special.”
The correspondents’ dinner debuted in 1921. Three years later, Coolidge became the first president to attend.
While all presidents but Trump went, not all did every year of their terms. Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon opted not to, and Ronald Reagan — then recovering from an assassination attempt — missed the 1981 installment, but called in from Camp David.
Trump attended the correspondents dinner before he was president, and was the subject of mocking by then-President Barack Obama in 2011. Obama joked: “Say what you will about Mr. Trump, he certainly would bring some change to the White House. Let’s see what we’ve got up there.”
The screens then flashed to a White House featuring a massive neon sign reading “Trump White House Hotel Casino Golf Course” featuring golden columns and a massive chandelier blocking the front entrance.
Made years before Trump became a politician, that joke has proved prophetic. Trump has leaned on his construction background to make over the White House in unprecedented ways during his second term.
Those remodeling efforts include paving over the lawn near the Rose Garden to install a patio reminiscent of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and affixing partisan plaques to portraits of all the presidents on a Walk of Fame along the Colonnade. He’s also adorned the Oval Office in copious amounts of gold decorations and demolished the East Wing to begin work on a massive ballroom.
Arriving back from a weekend at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday, Trump stopped to admire two new additions to the area around the Rose Garden, statues of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin that were erected there while he was away.
“Unbelievable statues. Come and look at them,” Trump told a pack of reporters nearby.
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