What rough beasts want to strong arm their way into a $400,000,000 ballroom that We, the People don't want, don't need, won't use and find offensive to the spirit of our democratic republic. How overbearing of DJT, who was never a journalist? How absurd for his pantomime pompous poltroonish criminal defense lawyer, crybaby Acting Attorney General, TODD WALACE BLANCHE, to mouth off about it? It's time for them to go.
From The Washington Post:
Why Trump’s ballroom can’t host the White House correspondents’ dinner
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an independent celebration of press freedoms.
“I didn’t want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House,” Trump said. “It’s actually a larger room, and it’s much more secure. It’s … drone-proof, it’s [got] bulletproof glass, we need the ballroom. That’s why Secret Service, that’s why the military are demanding it.”
When the ballroom is complete — the administration is aiming to have it built before the end of Trump’s term in early 2029 — you’re going to see arguments that the annual WHCA dinner should move from its traditional location since 1968, the Washington Hilton — sometimes nicknamed “the Hinckley Hilton,” because that was where John W. Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan.
In addition to Trump, senators such as Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Tim Sheehy (R-Montana) have urged that the dinner take place in the ballroom when construction is complete, and so has Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania). Fans of the ballroom will ask: If the event is put on by a group of White House correspondents, why not have it at the actual White HouseThis is a bad idea, for several reasons.
First, in a typical year for the WHCA dinner, attendance runs up to 2,600, a number the ballroom at rhe Washington Hilton can accommodate. The White House ballroom under construction was initially said to seat 650 people, but in October, Trump said the room would be able to seat 999 attendees. Attendance at the WHCA dinner would have to be cut by more 60 percent if the capacity is on the high end of the estimate, by three-quarters if it is at the low end.
Second, the White House Correspondents’ Association is a private organization, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Yes, for private events, the federal government can rent out certain spaces, such as the National Archivesor some of the Smithsonian museums. (The Smithsonian event policybars “partisan political events, product sales, religious and civil ceremonies ... gambling, and ticketed events by for-profit entities.”)
But the White House has never been rented out for private events (and while the Clinton administration’s use of the Lincoln Bedroom as a thank-you for donors may have sounded like renting it out, that doesn’t count). Once you open the door to the White House ballroom to one organization, all kinds of organizations will want the same deal.
What is the purpose of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner? It’s more than fair to gripe that the event has become an ostentatious, glitzy ritual, a virtual Oscars weekend for Washington journalists.
But the point of the evening is to celebrate an independent press and the First Amendment. The WHCA declares: “It is core to our organization’s mission, to American democracy itself, and to the needs of the American people to ensure the press has the ability to independently report on the presidency, without control from the government.”
Some contend that journalists dressing up in fancy clothes and drinking and dining with administration officials undermines that independence, a complaint I find overwrought. But once this takes place at the president’s house or in the adjacent ballroom, it’s a different story. The president can always be a welcome guest at an event celebrating an independent press, but he should not be the de facto host.
Let us also note the irony that the current president has barred Associated Press reporters from White House events and that his Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, threatens the independence of television journalists with metronomic regularity. But now Trump wants to host at the White House a dinner supposedly celebrating the press’s freedom from government coercion.
If Trump or some future president wants to host his own separate White House event celebrating the First Amendment or the people who cover the administration — great. But if the WHCA moves its annual dinner to the White House — particularly to a ballroom not authorized by Congress, built with a fundraising contract kept secret until a judge ordered it released, seen by many as a narcissistic president’s monument to himself — it won’t be perceived as merely acquiescing to unpleasant but real security concerns. It will be perceived as acquiescing to the president himself.
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