President Donald Trump took verbal shots at the journalists who were attending the “phony” White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD) in Washington D.C. Saturday night, telling an adoring Michigan crowd that the media “hate your guts.”
The president skipped the yearly WHCD, which offers politicians a chance to cross partisan lines to join members of the media in a good-humored celebration of the First Amendment. Instead, the POTUS held a campaign-like rally 500-plus miles away in Washington, Michigan, where he once again took aim at the press.
“Is this better than that phony Washington White House Correspondents’ Dinner? Is this more fun,” Trump asked his cheering supporters. “I could be up there tonight smiling like I love when they’re hitting you, shot after shot. These people, they hate your guts.”
This is the second year in a row that President Trump skipped the annual dinner that would have placed him in the same room as many of the journalists he has spent the past few years deriding as “fake news.” Michelle Wolf, a contributor on “The Daily Show,” hosted the annual event, which roasts the sitting occupant of the Oval Office to their face — a tradition the famously thin-skinned Trump was always unlikely to go for.
Watch the clip above.