White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is skipping this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner.
“I will not be in attendance at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, and that’s breaking news for the Sean Spicer Show,” the 27-year-old said on Friday during an appearance on the Sean Spicer Show.
The April event traditionally invites a comedian to perform a roast of the sitting president and their administration. It’s the main source of revenue for the WHCA, which supports journalists covering the president.
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President Donald Trump didn’t attend any of the WHCA dinners during his first term, deviating from a tradition that goes back numerous administrations.
Leavitt’s news follows the Trump administration’s controversial move to select which journalists make up the White House press pool. In February, the administration barred the Associated Press from the corps for refusing to refer to the “Gulf of Mexico” as the “Gulf of America” after Trump renamed the body of water in January.
Other traditional outlets like Bloomberg and Reuters no longer have a permanent spot, while right-wing media outlets like Blaze and Newsmax have been included. These “well-deserving” new players will help spread “President Trump’s message,” Leavitt said in February. She added that it was “time for the pool to reflect the media habits of the American people in 2025.”
WHCA President Eugene Daniels said that the public can “no longer trust” pool reports—reporting members of the White House press corps share with other outlets—and that the administration’s push to control who covers the president “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States.”
Beside Trump, every single president since Calvin Coolidge in 1924 has attended at least one of the independent organization’s dinners. Former President Joe Biden went to every single one during his four-year term.
Leavitt said in February that she had not ruled out the possibility of attending the dinner. She told reporters that the WHCA had picked an “interesting choice of a comedian” and she’d “talk to the boss and see what we decide.”
Comedian Amber Ruffin is slated to be the night’s entertainment. She has been publicly critical of the president and said that she didn’t think he would attend her performance.
“He should,” she said during a CNN interview. “He’s missing out on one of the cool things about being the president of the United States. But I don’t know that anyone’s looking forward to being in the same room as him.”
Daniels said he was “thrilled and honored” that the comic agreed to attend. Ruffin has been a writer for NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers.
“She has the ability to walk the line between blistering commentary and humor all while provoking her audience to think about the important issues of the day,” he said. “I’m thrilled and honored she said yes.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Ms. Leavitt and the White House for comment.
