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 Epstein
Trump 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 the feted event, Trump took many digs at reporters and the press in general. For example, he suggested that CNN’s Kaitlan Collins looked transgender.
He also joked that media outlets will go out of business once he leaves office and that their ratings will nosedive.
Baker, after igniting controversy with his post, claimed that his beef with the vaunted annual dinner, which is done to raise money for scholarships, predated Trump.
“To be clear, this is not a new position. The NY Times decided nearly 20 years ago, long before Trump, that we would stop attending, which was our policy under Obama and Biden. (The exception was for reporters if they won a prize to be awarded.),” Baker explained on Saturday.
“Last night validated that decision.”
Baker had been given the WHCA’s award for “Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure” during the dinner two years ago for his coverage of former President Joe Biden’s trek to Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
