Trump praises secret service at White House correspondents' dinner

The scheduled White House Correspondence Center took place Friday evening in Washington after a shooting disrupted the original event back in April. The gala celebrating press freedom has been an annual fixture for more than a century. On this occasion, several hundred veteran journalists, along with eight professional journalism organizations, signed a letter urging the Correspondence Association to use the dinner to condemn what they called Trump's attacks on the First Amendment. The U.S. president spoke for over an hour in the keynote speech, criticizing his political opponents, echoing oft-repeated themes and attack lines. Here is a clip. But I am delighted to be here at the White House Correspondence Dinner. Amazing people. A lot of people that I like, some I don't like at all, but I respect most of them. I must say that they do a great job, amazing job, and it's an honor. As I said three months ago, the show must go on. For more on this speech, here is France 24's White House Correspondent, Fraser Jackson. I'm sad that I missed that beef that Donald Trump joked had been run over by RFK Jr. himself. It seems like a really good meal that we missed there, but it was an interesting event that we saw there at the building just over my left shoulder there, the old Trump Hotel, now the Waldorf Astoria, about a third the size of the Washington Hilton, where the original event took place. It was also a smaller affair this time, but it started with some awkward scenes, as Wolf Blitzer from CNN read out some of the prizes that journalists this year had won, and some of them, of course, were not very flattering towards Donald Trump, and he was forced to shake their hands, including of reporters of the Wall Street Journal, who broke the story about an alleged birthday card that Donald Trump had written to the former financier Jeffrey Epstein. Donald Trump kind of shrugged his shoulders and said that it had been a rough night for him, but took it seemingly in good stead. But it was not long before he veered off his prepared remarks. Twelve minutes into his speech, he started talking about the ballroom that he was now building at the White House once again. He made that joke about RFK Jr. that I mentioned about running over the beef for the dinner. He also said that RFK Jr. was a very different kind of a person, saying, I will tell you. So he did rib some of his own cabinet, not just the press as well. He also, though, had a few jokes that did not land very well in the room. It must be said, some of Donald Trump's remarks tonight were much more kind of much less harsh, it should be said, when he was riffing off of the cuff, talking quite warmly in some moments about the press. And then when he went back onto his prepared remarks, that's when the kind of harsh tone came in. But Donald Trump did seem to edit himself in real time from saying some of the more harsh jokes, but that didn't stop him at other times also going there, including with Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example. At one point, he completely went off the speech and went into a tirade, more of a rally style speech when he was talking about elections and people who'd wronged him in the past. And nobody was safe at that point. It was various elected officials. It was comedians that Donald Trump brailed against. But ultimately, he did kind of come back on message at the end. He put on a Trump 2028 hat to troll the media, saying that he would be running for another term. And he also said that he would be at the White House dinner next year. So we'll see whether he stays true to that word. And we see him there next April.