For the first time in the 140-year history of the Gridiron Club Dinner, those gathered did not offer the traditional toast to the sitting U.S. president. Instead, leading members of the Washington press corps paid tribute to the First Amendment.
The Unprecedented Absence
The broken ritual capped off a night of ominous signs about the state of the Washington media’s fraught relationship with the Trump administration.
At the annual white-tie, off-camera, and bipartisan dinner, where the guidance for jokes is to ‘singe, not burn,’ a coldness marked the moment instead.
Planning for the event in the days before led to an evening unlike anyone in the room could recall, according to two people closely involved.
By Friday before the dinner, Judy Woodruff, the PBS journalist, announced to club members that the Trump administration would not have a speaker at the dinner, and the toast would be to the First Amendment instead.
Two sources said President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance both declined invitations last month.
“Nobody went because either we were busy working or we just don’t care to be recognized by that crowd,” one White House official told Playbook Sunday morning. A spokesperson for the vice president did not immediately return a request for comment Sunday.
Mutual Snubs
The snubs were, in many ways, mutual. In addition to inviting Trump and Vance, the Gridiron Club also invited Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Communications Director Steven Cheung, and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, among others.
The administration didn’t send a representative to speak for the first time in recent memory. It’s usually the president or the vice president: During Trump’s first term, the duty fell to former Vice President Mike Pence in 2017, Trump himself in 2018, senior adviser Ivanka Trump in 2019, and would’ve included former National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien in 2020 before the dinner was canceled due to the pandemic.
Growing Rift
Trump’s own remarks in 2018 are a time capsule of just how much the rift between him and the press has grown. Back then, he thanked the press ‘for all you do to support and sustain our democracy. I mean that. I mean that. Some incredible people in the press. Really, I don’t get to say it often. But you have some incredible, brilliant, powerful, smart, and fair people in the press. And I want to thank you.’
Last night, that wasn’t the case. Traditionally dozens of White House advisers fill the room, but there were scant few in attendance. The dinner still featured a Cabinet secretary—HUD Secretary Scott Turner — as well as speakers and lawmakers from both parties, as well as skits skewering Democrats and Republicans — maintaining a long tradition on each of those fronts since 1885.
Substitute Speaker
To substitute for an administration speaker, Woodruff went into the Gridiron archives to show a video featuring comments from the last four Republican presidents—including Trump speaking to the importance of a press in democracy.
It’s unclear why Turner’s presence at the event as a member of the administration wasn’t enough to toast. Woodruff didn’t immediately respond when asked.
Key Takeaways
Gridiron members drew applause for stating their support for the Associated Press, currently barred from covering official White House events, and the Voice of America, which the White House Saturday said would be stripped back by executive order to ‘ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.’ It’s also worth noting that more than a decade after journalist Austin Tice was kidnapped in Syria, his mother Debra attended the event and received a standing ovation.
All of this comes just weeks ahead of the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 26, an event that Trump did not attend throughout his presidency — breaking tradition from his predecessors.
Already, Leavitt said on ‘The Sean Spicer Show’ Friday that she will not attend.
