Donald Trump will attend and deliver his first White House Correspondents' Dinner speech at the rescheduled event on Friday. The dinner, moved after gunfire forced an evacuation in April, will be held at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, D.C., with tighter security and a smaller guest setup.
He is returning after skipping the dinner throughout his first term and the first year of his second term. The White House said several Cabinet officials and senior administration leaders will attend, while White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will be seated up front with the president, like last time.
Waldorf Astoria security changes
The event shifted from the Washington Hilton, where it had been hosted for 58 years, to the Waldorf Astoria in Washington. The rescheduled dinner will use private screening, no traditional red carpet or cocktail reception, and a significantly smaller ballroom.
Those changes follow the April 25 postponement after an alleged attempted assassination and gunfire forced an evacuation. The tighter format sets the conditions for a smaller crowd and a more controlled arrival process than the dinner has used for decades.
White House attendance list
The White House said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll and Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz will attend.
First lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will not attend. A White House spokesperson said their absences are due to prior commitments, leaving the president’s appearance as the clearest signal of how the administration is handling the rescheduled dinner.
Trump and the dinner
Trump attended the first dinner in April after skipping it during his first term. During that earlier boycott, he kept away from the event amid a contentious relationship with the media at the height of coverage of the Russia investigation.
Now he is returning to a dinner shaped by security restrictions and a narrowed guest list, but his remarks have not been detailed. Weijia Jiang said, "This dinner will not only be an opportunity to carry out our program. It will be a statement that violence has no place in American life and a free press will not be intimidated into silence. As you have all demonstrated, courage and community can and should rise above,"
