White House holds rescheduled dinner
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Three months after a gunman upended the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, guests at the rescheduled event arrived Friday to markedly tighter security, a much smaller guest list, a more relaxed dress code -- and expectations of a confrontational presidential speech teased by his press secretary as "unifying yet vicious."
The rescheduled dinner was taking place in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, a smaller venue that held only about 700 people. Guests entered via a single entrance, through two ID checks and past a detection dog, armed officers and security guards. There was no red carpet and no separate cocktail receptions preceding the dinner.
President Donald Trump entered the ballroom to polite applause, and was thanked for his support by WHCA president Weijia Jiang of CBS News.
"Let's try this again," Jiang quipped, welcoming the crowd. The White House press corps, she noted, "always has a follow-up." Turning serious, she referred back to the trauma and confusion of the original dinner in April.
"Tonight our message is this: We are back," she said. "We will not be intimidated. We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word."
Besides the pared-down approach, there was another change at Friday's dinner: two additional awards. One will be presented to Victor Gonzales, the Secret Service agent who was staffing a security checkpoint in April and was struck in his protective vest.