Here’s a question for you: If the Fraternal Order of Police were to plan a banquet, would it ever decide to invite, as its keynote speaker, someone who by definition defies law enforcement? In other words, a convicted felon.
No way. And yet the collaborationist leaders of the White House Correspondents Association decided to invite, as its keynote speaker last Friday night, someone who loathes independent journalism, a pathological liar who rapes factual reality. And who’s a convicted felon.
The annual WHCA dinner has long been an insular Beltway bloat-a-thon where bejeweled and tuxedoed newspeople suck up to the newsmakers, but the ‘206 version (restaged after the April event was truncated by gunfire) was truly unique because never before had the dining journalists felt compelled to sit there in quietude and weather a full hour of free-form demagoguery – much of it aimed at them, mocking their core mission.
Nobody walked out. It was the silence of the lambs.
But the winner of the normalization sweepstakes was Jacqui Heinrich, the new WHCA president, who smilingly embraced the fascist guest of honor. No surprise there, because Jacqui works for Fox News, the propaganda outlet that shelled out $787 million in a court settlement after it was outed for amplifying Trump’s relentless lies about the 2020 election.
One outside group, the Society of Professional Journalists, had warned in advance that “it is hypocritical to celebrate the First Amendment in front of the man who relentlessly attacks it.” And indeed he has – sending subpoenas to reporters whose stories he hates, challenging the license renewals of ABC-owned stations because ABC didn’t broadcast his recent prime-time address, banning the Associated Press from the Oval Office, suing the BBC and Wall Street Journal, mocking female reporters’ looks, and much more.
The WHCA’s leaders did more than just celebrate the First Amendment in front of the man. They gave him the podium.
I’m old enough to remember when a president – any president, even Nixon – comported himself with at least a modicum of dignity. But on Friday night, I was magically transported back to my seventh grade cafeteria, where bullies spewed insults between bites of sloppy joes. I duly learned during the dinner that Bruce Springsteen “looks like hell,” that Sen. Adam Schiff is “Watermelon Head because he has the largest head I’ve ever seen with the smallest pencil neck,” that Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert are “terrible people without talent,” that Texas Democrat James Talarico “looks like Alfred E. Newman,” that prosecutor Jack Smith is “a deranged lunatic,” that Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker is “a fat pig,” and that CNN’s Kaitlan Collins looks like a transperson.
I was also informed – this I did not know! – that the word Democrat has been replaced by Dumocrat. Our MAGA professor of linguistics explained it this way: “The word Dumocrat is something that’s come into fashion. I changed the E with a U, and most people don’t know that ‘dumb’ has a B, so we don’t have to worry about that. It’s very quiet. I thought it was quite good, but I haven’t gotten much credit for that.”
You may have heard more eloquent articulation from an unhoused fellow on your street corner. I know I have.
He was on firmer ground while telling lies. I won’t waste your time fact-checking the doozies – that his 2020 election loss was “rigged,” that his war in Iran is “going extremely well,” yadda yadda – because you’ve heard it all before. But one in particular stopped me cold:
“I have a lot of respect for your profession.”
If that were true, he wouldn’t be attacking journalists as “stupid” and “corrupt” and “horrible,” he wouldn’t have filed a lawsuit that posted the home address of a Wall Street Journal reporter (who had to flee with her family for safety), he wouldn’t have issued subpoenas (via his personal law firm formerly known as the Justice Department) targeting New York Times reporters’ family members. And he wouldn’t be intimating that journalists who seek the truth are America’s enemies:
“It’s time to expose the crooked-media deceptions…These are really, really dishonest people, and they’re bad people. And I really think they don’t like our country. I really believe that…These are sick people. You know the thing I don’t understand? You would think they’d want to make our country great again, and I honestly believe they don’t.”
But you won’t find those lines in the WHCA transcript. He riffed those sentiments during a Phoenix speech to his cultists…nine years ago. He is now as he has always been, except worse.
How shameful it was Beltway journalists platformed the enemy of everything they stand for, and reduced their celebratory dinner to a recycled MAGA meetup. Their core principles are trumped by their lust for proximity to power. The odds they’ll learn a lesson from this debacle are roughly one in a million, but if there was one shaft of light in the darkness, one wee moment of joy the other night, it was a remark he uttered near the end of the ordeal:
“You people have no idea how lucky you are. When I’m gone, you’re all gonna be broke.”
“When I’m gone…”
And my heart skipped a beat.
Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at [email protected]