The White House Correspondents' Dinner finally happened, rescheduled and moved to the Waldorf Astoria for security. Attendance dropped from well over two thousand to about seven hundred. Five of the six awards went to anti-Trump reporting. And then the President spoke.
Curtis Houck, Managing Editor of NewsBusters at the Media Research Center, walks through what actually happened in that room, including the Bruce Springsteen line that renamed the tour and landed, in his words, like a lead balloon. Houck's read: in a different audience that joke gets a laugh. This room could not take it.
Then the fallout. Peter Baker of the New York Times says it is time to rethink the whole dinner, which Houck notes is a curious position for a paper that has largely skipped the event for close to twenty years except when it wins awards. Brian Stelter joined in. Houck argues there are real reasons to end the dinner, starting with how cozy the press is with the people it is supposed to hold accountable, but that is not the reason being given. The reason being given is that Donald Trump showed up and had a good time.
Jenny Beth Martin adds the U2 concert she walked out on in 1992, and the case that people who buy concert tickets are not there for a political lecture.
More at jennybethshow.com and teapartypatriots.org.
00:00 — Trump on Bruce Springsteen: the tour gets renamed
00:27 — Why the joke landed like a lead balloon
01:55 — A concert, a lecture, and a buzzkill
02:57 — Peter Baker says it is time to rethink the dinner
03:51 — The real reason to end it: they are too cozy
04:37 — Not because it is ridiculous, but because Trump showed up
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