Trump administration will skip press dinner, White House says

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says Trump administration officials will not be attending this year’s annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Saturday, following the president’s decision to boycott the event.

President Donald Trump announced earlier this month that he would be skipping the dinner for the third year in a row, telling reporters it was too “boring” and “negative.”

He’ll be holding a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, instead.

Many White House staffers and other administration officials had been planning to attend the dinner as guests of news organizations.

In a statement responding to the decision, Olivier Knox, the association’s president, said: “We’re looking forward to an enjoyable evening of celebrating the First Amendment and great journalists past, present and future.”

Trump has a deeply fraught relationship with the press, frequently criticizing news organizations and declaring stories he doesn’t like “fake news.”

He issued a series of tweets Tuesday lashing out at several news personalities and claimed, without evidence, that back in the “old days,” presidents whose terms coincided with good economies “were basically immune from criticism.”