For the second straight year, President Donald Trump is holding a rally instead of attending the White House Correspondents Dinner. The president’s campaign announced Tuesday that Trump will hold a rally on April 28 in the Detroit suburb of Washington Township. His rally is slated to begin around the same time as the glitzy gala. Trump has skipped the dinner both years he has been in office. But this year, unlike in 2017, he has encouraged aides to attend. Some, however, will be needed to staff the just-announced rally. Last year, he held a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and spent much of the evening bashing the press, saying he was “with much, much better people” at the rally.
The White House Correspondents Dinner is a fundraiser for college journalism scholarship programs and started in 1921. President Trump has been the only President to not attend at least once since Calvin Coolidge attended the 1924 event. It was canceled three times: 1930 following the death of former President William Howard Taft; 1942 after the United State entered World War II; and 1951 due to concerns from President Harry Truman over the “uncertainty of the world situation.” President Reagan did not attend in 1981 after being shot in an assassination attempt the month before, but no President had missed the event until Trump skipped out last year and this year.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
