Instead of carrying out presidential tradition and attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, President Trump will be holding a post-campaign rally. He will be the first U.S. president to skip the dinner since Ronald Reagan and the first to skip without a substantiated reason for doing so.
Trump will be in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, while Hasan Minhaj, comedian and senior correspondent at “The Daily Show,” will be knocking Washington, D.C. elites down a peg in a ballroom absent of Trump and his boycotting staffers. Alternatively, comedian and late-night talk show host Samantha Bee will be host to her own version of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an event named “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.”
Washington, D.C.’s one night of jokes is becoming increasingly eerie.
It’s not surprising that Trump will be skipping the annual dinner and roast. His political career as a birther-proponent was famously criticized when comedian and late-night talk show host Seth Meyers roasted the real estate and media-mogul at former president Barack Obama’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011. It’s clear he isn’t capable of meeting such public scrutiny without retaliating.
The public knew since February that the president would be skipping this year’s Correspondents’ Dinner since he announced it on Twitter. It was expected that a man who whines daily from his social media would miss out on a celebration of his most personal failings.
But while Trump prefers the cheering crowds to self-deprecating humor, it’s strange and unnerving that he would continue his campaign celebration months after his inauguration.
Trump’s insists on continuously celebrating his election victory while chaos reigns within his cabinet and judges and legal experts scrutinize his executive orders. This exhibits his refusal to acknowledge any personal failings. While the man’s 100-day approval rating looms the lowest of any president since Dwight Eisenhower, Trump continues to claim that his successes are “yuge.” In his eyes, any media member or citizen claiming otherwise is a liar.
What do we make of a person unable to handle criticism or rejection, much less if that person is our president?
Trump is undoubtedly the most insecure man in public office. What’s befuddling, however, is that this insecurity seems to make him — not break him.
He built his political career out of insecurity-induced retaliations against other public personas. His insecure attacks against people or issues he has no knowledge of are labeled merely “telling it like it is.”
The man is incapable of living up to his words. And instead of facing humorous criticism, he will rally a crowd to attack anyone who dares to speak ill of him.
Regardless of what deep-cutting insults are hurled at the Correspondents’ Dinner or Pennsylvania rally, the country will become even more divided as Trump supporters and dissenters refuse to sit in the same room, laughing at the same jokes.
