President Donald Trump, 80, closed his hour-long address to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Friday night, July 24, by pulling a red “Trump 2028” cap onto his head and joking about seeking another term despite constitutional limits. The moment concluded a wandering address that produced little reaction from the formally dressed attendees and sparked immediate condemnation across social media and television networks.
Held at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington — the building Trump once operated as his namesake hotel in the city — the July 24, 2026, event had been rescheduled after a gunman disrupted the original April gathering. What his staff had billed beforehand as a “unifying but vicious” routine fell short of expectations, featuring unsuccessful jokes and caustic remarks that prompted scattered jeers before attendees fell silent.
A Speech That Fell Flat
By the time Trump finished, the audience managed only meager applause. Weijia Jiang, CBS News correspondent and outgoing president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, took the podium as the president’s exit music played, appearing surprised by what had transpired. Asked earlier how long the president would speak, she recalled telling people they should already know the answer. “You’re White House Correspondents, you should know,” Jiang said, before thanking him.
Trump himself seemed to sense the room turning against him. At one point he asked whether anyone understood his material, and he grumbled that his unnamed writers had handed him weak lines. He claimed to be singlehandedly propping up the news business, warning journalists that they would all go broke once he leaves office because, he said, nobody cares about anybody else. He then counted how many stories on the front page of the New York Times were about him.
The speech revisited a familiar list of grievances: the 2020 election, his hostility toward the press, his planned White House ballroom, his tendency to put his own name on buildings and projects, and questions about Biden’s cognitive abilities. Attendees stayed largely silent as he delivered lines better suited to a campaign rally than a dinner celebrating the First Amendment.
Insults, Awards and a Fourth Campaign
Trump aimed pointed insults at journalists by name, including CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, whose award he said she should not have received and whose reporting he dismissed as fake. As he began the attack, some in the audience booed before the room fell quiet. His barbs also hit Democratic targets, among them California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The evening carried a jarring contrast. Trump stood and shook hands with the very reporters he has sparred with and sued, presenting awards to journalists from outlets he routinely attacks. A Wall Street Journal team was honored for its coverage of the president’s links to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Trump said he respected “most of them,” while accusing many present of suffering from what he called Trump Derangement Syndrome, describing the dinner as the largest gathering of such people ever assembled.
The finale drew the most attention. Slipping on the “Trump 2028” hat, he announced what he framed as a scoop — his intention to run for a fourth time, apparently meaning a fourth campaign rather than a fourth term. Earlier he had joked that his presidency, like the dinner, was better the second time around, adding that a third would be better still before insisting he was only kidding. The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951 after Franklin D. Roosevelt served four consecutive terms, limits presidents to two.
Backlash Across the Political Spectrum
Newsom’s official press account on X hit back sharply, calling the president a pig while reposting the clip of his Collins attack. On CNN, Van Jones, CNN political commentator and former Obama adviser, delivered one of the harshest verdicts, arguing the speech had squandered a chance to connect. “It just wasn’t funny,” Jones said, adding that Trump had turned into a “rabid grizzly” attacking everything in sight and had not mentioned a single American besides himself and his enemies.
Others echoed the assessment. Washington Post writer Maura Judkis described the event as crass, surreal and deeply cringeworthy, noting that the only reliable laughter came from a section of the room that appeared to be made up entirely of administration officials. Online, one observer likened the remarks to a stream of internet troll comments, while another wrote simply that they could not believe anyone was proud of the performance.
Not everything Friday was combative. Trump praised the Secret Service and denounced political violence, telling the crowd that Americans settle their differences through debate, not bullets. He presented an award to Secret Service officer Victor Gonzalez, who was shot during the April chaos when a round struck his protective vest. Jiang, who told the audience she refused to let violence have the final word, said the dinner would return next year to the Washington Hilton, the site of that attack.
