The White House Correspondents' Association will hold a rescheduled White House Correspondents' Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria on Friday, July 24, and the White House said President Donald Trump will attend and is scheduled to speak.
The event was moved nearly three months after the April 25 dinner at the Washington Hilton was cut short when a suspected gunman rushed a security checkpoint and exchanged fire with officers; more than 2,000 journalists, lawmakers, celebrities and Trump administration officials were attending and some heard loud popping sounds outside the ballroom.
"This dinner will not only be an opportunity to carry out our program," said Weijia Jiang, the association’s president and a CBS News reporter. "It will be a statement that violence has no place in American life and a free press will not be intimidated into silence."
Prosecutors say the suspect was Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, who they say opened fire inside the Washington Hilton. Allen pleaded not guilty in May to charges including attempting to assassinate the president, transportation of a firearm with intent to commit a felony, discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence and assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon, and prosecutors allege he had written a note to family members saying he was targeting administration officials.
The association said it would hold the dinner at a smaller venue with enhanced safety measures and plans to present special awards to those who helped during the attempted shooting, including Secret Service Police Officer Victor Gonzales, who will receive the President’s Award for Exceptional Service. The association announced on Tuesday that it will present the award during Friday night's dinner to Gonzales and the staff of the Washington Hilton, and Jiang said, "Officer Gonzales played a significant role when he ran toward danger so that thousands of others could make it home safely. His courage stemmed from a dedication to service, which we are looking forward to honoring this week."
"During the confrontation, Gonzales was struck in his protective vest and continued responding to the threat," the Secret Service said.
The Washington Hilton staff will receive awards for preserving and donating unserved meals to local shelters, the association said.
Trump was unable to deliver planned remarks on April 25 and the rescheduled appearance will be his first time attending the dinner as president; the source said he had refused to attend throughout his first term. In a June 2 social media post, Trump said he was debating whether to "give the same rather nasty statements" he planned to include in the original speech.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that "Alongside all of you members of the media, the president looks forward to finishing what he started before a despicable assassination attempt derailed the original event back in April." Leavitt also told NBC News, "The president’s speech will be a combination of unifying yet vicious, and serious yet hilarious, all at the same time, if you can imagine that." A senior White House official said it is "safe to say" Trump will "briefly address" the April violence and that the president may include some of the jokes written for the earlier dinner.
Sean Curran, the Secret Service director, said in a briefing that the agency's measures worked in April and that they are preparing for Friday's rescheduled dinner. "We will always evaluate every site and, right now, we have an advance team there and they will take back and they will set up a plan to set that site up for success just like we did at the White House correspondents' dinner at the Hilton," Curran said.
The dinner is taking place at the Waldorf Astoria on Pennsylvania Avenue, which was formerly the Trump International Hotel. The Waldorf's 700-person event space is about a quarter of the size of the Washington Hilton ballroom, which holds over 3,000 people.
The shooting took place before the scheduled program that features the presentation of journalism awards, remarks from the president and entertainment from an invited headliner. This year's entertainer was mentalist Oz Pearlman, who will be back for the redo dinner, the association said, adding that it was determined "to finish the program that was interrupted."
Among those scheduled to attend are Leavitt, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Some who attended the first dinner will not be at the second, including first lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The dinner begins at 8 p.m. ET on Friday, July 24, with a red carpet and live stream beginning at 6 p.m. ET. More than 500 journalists, journalism organizations and press freedom groups have called on the association to speak out against the Trump administration's attacks on the media, and earlier in July the Justice Department subpoenaed New York Times journalists over reporting about security concerns with the Qatari Air Force One jet gifted to Trump; the DOJ agreed to withdraw those subpoenas this week after facing pushback from a federal judge.