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White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said he was skipping the White House Correspondent Association (WHCA) dinner scheduled for April 26th.
Leavitt made the announcement during his podcast appearance with Shaun Spicer, who served as President Donald Trump’s White House press secretary for the first six months of 2017.
“I won’t be attending the White House correspondent’s dinner, which is breaking the news for the ‘Shawn Spicer Show’,” Levitt said.
Leavitt said the WHCA has “been a monetized monopoly over the White House and the US president’s reporting.”
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Press Director Caroline Leavitt will speak to a reporter at the White House in Washington on Friday, March 14th, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“This is a group of journalists who have been covering the White House for decades,” she said in a podcast released Friday. “They started this organization because the president wasn’t doing enough press conferences at the time. I don’t think there’s any more issues under this president, so media priorities have changed, especially in this new digital age.”
Leavitt said the WHCA “is an exclusive group of journalists covering this White House and we don’t welcome anyone else, new media, independent journalists, so we’re crossed our arms, so we thought it was time to expand our coverage and decide who will ask the US president in the OVAL office.
“Since we began this new process of determining daily rotation, many new voices and outlets that have never been to this small group of privileged journalists have access to a very unique and privileged space and have been able to cover this presidency.
White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said the WHCA has “been a monetized monopoly over the White House and the US president’s reporting.” (AP Photo/Ben Cartis)
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The White House said in late February that journalists, part of a pool of 13 members covering Trump in limited spaces like oval offices and the Air Force, will decide whether it will break from the century-old tradition of independently choosing where the president will do if all press agencies cannot accommodate full press corporations.
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Eugene Daniels, president of the WHCA board and politician correspondent, said he “shept tears at the independence of the US free press,” but the White House defended the news pool as modernising its media pool and expanding past legacy media. The Trump administration said three traditional wire services, the Associated Press, Bloomberg and Reuters, would not have a permanent location in the pool and instead would spin one spot with a group of 13 members.
The White House later banned the Associated Press from the press pool after ignoring Trump’s executive order that renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the US Gulf. U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden warned that case law did not support the White House and planned for another hearing on March 20, but the ban was temporarily upheld in federal courts.
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Trump did not attend the WHCA annual dinner during his first term. Last month, the association tapped comedian Amber Ruffin to find dinner this year, author of “Late Show with Seth Myers.” Ruffin told CNN’s Jake Tupper that the president should go to events traditionally attended by the president and the first lady, but “no one wants” Trump to appear.
Daniel Wallace is a news and political reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to danielle.wallace@fox.com and to X:@danimwallace.
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