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Trump Humiliated a Submissive Mainstream Media at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

His speech was racist, homophobic, vindictive, and soul-crushingly unfunny—and the journalists in the crowd didn’t seem to care.

Fittingly, the disgraceful second edition of the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD) was celebrated in a venue that embodies Donald Trump’s corruption and impunity.

The ceremony was initially held in April at the Washington Hilton, but was interrupted by a failed assassination attempt. The second dinner took place on Friday at the Waldorf Astoria Washington DC, which from 2015 to 2022 was known as the Trump International Hotel Washington DC.

In Trump’s first term, the fact that the sitting president owned a hotel in the capital quickly led to recurring conflicts of interest: Many foreign dignitaries and political allies paid for the services of the hotel, a quick and easy way to curry favor. At least five people who received presidential pardons from Trump previously stayed at the hotel while the commander in chief owned it. Now, in his second term, Trump no longer owns the hotel—and, as the weekend’s nauseating spectacle showed, he probably wishes he still did.

The central event of the WHCD was a more-than-hour-long speech by Trump, during which he marveled at what he got away with when he owned the hotel. “I was very proud of this building,” Trump told the audience consisting mostly of journalists and White House staff. “This building was hot. Remember the lobby floor? 82,000 feet. For those in the real estate business, 82,000 feet. That’s a major, that’s a major floor. That thing was packed every single night. It was packed mostly Republicans, I would say, but it was packed every single night. It almost brings back memories.” Trump being Trump, he went on to a digression about the “beautiful chandeliers” at the hotel, which were “very special” and made from “Czech crystal.”

The throwaway comment about “mostly Republicans” filling the hotel would be damning if the United States were a country that took the constitutional prohibition against emoluments seriously. By acknowledging that the building was being used by political allies to enrich the president, Trump was displaying what jurists call mens rea, a guilty mind.

Luckily for Trump, he wasn’t speaking to a jury. He was speaking to a much friendlier crowd—the supposed crème de la crème of US political journalists. By all available evidence, they didn’t care. What does a little corruption matter, especially compared to the truly gargantuan graft of Trump’s second term?

Not that the billions Trump has funneled into his personal coffers since returning to the White House mattered to the WHCD attendees either. If it did, they wouldn’t have shown up on Friday. And that tells you everything you need to know about what is wrong with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

To be sure, the event has always been tawdry and cringe-worthy, even under presidents much less brazenly criminal than Trump. It’s a backslapping affair where the media that is supposed to hold the government accountable spends an evening making bad jokes while reveling in its proximity to power. Like the Al Smith dinner in New York, the WHCD is supposed to humanize the political system by showing that seemingly adversarial figures can come together for a good laugh. But in reality, these rituals of comity are also rituals of elite impunity—the whole point is to create an inner-circle bond through social ties that override any larger commitment to principle.

Last April, my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann made the case for getting rid of the WHCD........

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