Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

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October 4, 2022
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Trump should reconsider his decision to skip annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner

2016-08-24_DonaldTrump_Joshua
Joshua Guerra

For the past few months, President Donald Trump’s administration has been in constant conflict with the media. From Sean Spicer defending Trump’s wire-tapping claims to CNN momentarily banning Kellyanne Conway all stems from one issue — credibility.

Even more confusing is the fact that both the White House and the media blame the other for lacking credibility. Before, that’s all it was — finger pointing — but now their relationship has reached a new low when Trump announced that he would not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 29.

The WHCD has been an annual tradition since 1914 and the dinner serves to reinforce the relationship between the press and the presidential administration. In a sense, it is a public demonstration of their mutually beneficial relationship “where journalists serve as a supporting cast” for the information controlled by Washington, as New York Times Columnist Frank Rich said. Although the WHCD is a single night, the dinner represents a year-round symbiotic relationship between the press and the White House.


Dr. Aaron Zacks, a lecturer at the Department of Rhetoric and Writing, clarifies that the president’s presence at the WHCD plays a symbolic role where he can show his more personal side to the public.   

“The president’s appearance at the dinner is supposed to be a novelty,” Zacks said. “That is, while the president is meant to be generally serious and inaccessible, the dinner presents an opportunity to step outside the conventional role. Trump revels in defying that conventional role and for good reason, since it’s the attribute that contributed most clearly to his primary and general election victories.”

What makes the Trump administration different from previous administrations is that Trump ran his campaign on a platform built on criticizing the media. This damaged the media’s credibility with the public where only 32 percent of the public expresses considerable trust in the press, an eight point drop from the previous year. The negative campaign has resulted in the media and press ostracizing the administration. Trump and his administration’s behavior is antithetical to how Washington bureaucrats are expected to act and this is what has given them authority over their constituents — the ability to bully the media.  

It’s clear that Trump’s administration entered the White House already on bad terms with the media, and Trump not attending the WHCD suggests their relationship will not be repaired anytime soon. As previously mentioned, the WHCD serves to demonstrate the relationship between Washington and the media through the occupation of a shared, public space. His absence is symbolic because it delegitimizes how the media previously held control over the political narrative.

We should take note of what we’re seeing because both the media and the White House are making efforts not to associate with one another as an attempt to retain their credibility.

Such as when Trump cited the New York Times when making a wire tapping claim before denouncing that same publication. But despite Trump skipping the WHCD, or any journalists dislike for the current president, their attempts at a separation are in vain. Strained relationship or not, they can’t exist without each other.

Fernandez is a rhetoric and writing and Spanish senior from Allen. She is a Senior Columnist.

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Trump should reconsider his decision to skip annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner