Leavitt Says She Will Not Be Attending The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House on February 12, 2025 in Washington, DC.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has announced that she will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner. 

During a podcast episode with Sean Spicer, who served as President Donald Trump’s White House press secretary for the first six months of 2017, Leavitt said that she would not attend the April 26^th dinner. 

“I will not be in attendance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and that’s breaking news for ‘The Sean Spicer Show,’” Leavitt said. 

She went on to say that she feels like the WHCA “has truly become a monetized monopoly over the White House and the coverage of the president of the United States in America.”

“This is a group of journalists who’ve been covering the White House for decades,” she said. “They started this organization because the presidents at the time were not doing enough press conferences. I don’t think we have that problem anymore under this president, so the priorities of the media have shifted, especially with this new digital age.” 

She also stated that the WHCA has been an “exclusive group of journalists who cover this White House, they have not really welcomed other people, new media, independent journalists, with open arms, and so we thought it was time to expand the coverage and determine who gets to be part of that 13-person press pool, who gets to ask the president of the United States questions in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One.” 

“Since we have started this new process of determining the daily rotation, so many new voices and outlets who have never been part of this small and privileged group of journalists have been able to access those very unique and privileged spaces and cover this presidency and that’s very important,” Leavitt added, revealing that the White House has received more than 15,000 applications for the new media seat in the press briefing room.

In late February, the White House announced that it would choose which journalists would be part of the 13-member pool covering Trump in limited spaces, such as the Oval Office or Air Force One, breaking with the century-old tradition of the WHCA independently selecting which news outlets go where the president goes when the entire press corps cannot be accommodated.

Eugene Daniels, head of the WHCA board and a Politico journalist, claimed the decision “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States,” however the White House defended the move as upgrading the press pool to include more than just legacy media. The Trump administration said that the three conventional wire services – the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Reuters – would no longer have a permanent seat in the pool, but would instead rotate a single spot among the 13 members.

The White House later banned the Associated Press from the press pool after the outlet ignored Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

President Trump did not attend the WHCA dinner during his first term.

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