By Helen Coster
June 2 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump will attend the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on July 24, he said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, nearly three months after the annual event was postponed following a shooting.
The black-tie gathering of journalists and politicians in Washington was postponed after a suspect stormed a security checkpoint and fired a shotgun outside the event on April 25, with Trump in attendance.
Trump and first lady Melania Trump were safely rushed out of the dinner.
In a letter to association members on Tuesday, WHCA president and CBS News senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang said the decision to reschedule was not “automatic,” and the event will feature “significantly enhanced safety measures and new access procedures.”
Trump — who has a history of maligning the media — posted that Jiang asked him to attend and speak, and that he accepted. He added: “I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out.”
Trump said the event will take place at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Washington. The Trump Organization developed the hotel, once a federal office building, and sold it in 2022.
Jiang said in her letter that the association has raised funds to ensure WHCA members who purchased tickets will not have to pay if they attend the second event, which she described as a “more intimate gathering.”
“This dinner will not only be an opportunity to carry out our program,” Jiang wrote. “It will be a statement that violence has no place in American life and a free press will not be intimidated into silence.”
The annual gala – a Washington fixture for more than a century – raises funds for journalism scholarships and celebrates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which guarantees free speech and a free press.
In 2011, Democratic President Barack Obama used his WHCA speech to roast Trump, then attending the dinner as a real estate mogul and reality television star. Trump waited, however, until this year to make his first appearance as president. His attendance and the tone of his expected remarks at the April event were highly anticipated in Washington.
(Reporting by Helen Coster and Bhargav Acharya; Editing by Rod Nickel)
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