Donald Trump is skipping next weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the first president to miss the so-called “nerd prom” since Ronald Reagan sat out in 1981 while he was recovering from an assassination attempt. But that doesn‘t mean he’ll be kicking back at Mar-a-Lago. On Saturday the president announced via Twitter that he would be holding a “BIG rally” in Pennsylvania on the same night.
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The fate of the annual media and politics bacchanal seemed up for debate from the moment Trump, who has attended several times as a guest in the past, was elected. While the annual goings on at the Washington Hilton seemed to be tailor-made for the nation’s first reality TV star president, the Trump administration’s confrontational relationship with the press had many outlets reconsidering their participation. There was also the question of how the volatile president might respond to be being roasted in front of the world. (Some argue that Trump’s long, strange road to the White House began after Barack Obama bruised Trump in his 2011 performance at the dinner.) Trump ended the speculation on February 25 when he tweeted that he would sit this year’s edition out.
But it turns out that didn’t mean he wouldn’t seek out some attention on the night of the big party, as evidenced by his newly announced plans. Trump caught rally fever on the campaign trail, preferring the mass gatherings for their message dissemination and in-real-life adulation. After he was elected said that the rallies would continue as a victory tour, the most recent of which was held in Louisville, Kentucky in March.
Trump also tweeted that a “Big TAX REFORM AND TAX REDUCTION” will be announced on Wednesday, three days ahead of the dinner and his rally. Surely, neither W.H.C.D. host Hasan Minhaj, nor the president, will be at a loss for material next weekend.
