Aid and Comfort to the Enemy

The recklessness of the White House Correspondents’ Association’s self-own

Obama’s predictions about what Donald would do to the White House are coming true.

Here’s an alarming trend since Donald has gotten back into office: the American government seems to be more interested in enriching and empowering our enemies than it is in assisting and strengthening our allies.

Russia, to the extent that it can be said to be the enemy of Putin’s puppet and his complicit regime, is benefitting enormously from Donald’s illegal, unconstitutional war-of-choice against Iran. Since the beginning of the war, 20% of the world’s oil supply has been effectively frozen and the price of Brent crude oil per barrel has increased by as much as 70 percent. In a desperate bid to lower gas prices here at home, Donald lifted sanctions against Russia thereby making Russian oil much more valuable. This comes at a crucial period in Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine—filling its coffers and giving it more resources with which to gain the upper hand in the conflict against our erstwhile ally. (It’s worth pointing out that this windfall occurs in the context of U.S. aid to Ukraine falling by 99% since Donald’s inauguration in January 2025.)

Iran, our sworn enemy, is more powerful than it has been in decades thanks to Donald’s ineptitude. The war has effectively handed them control of the Strait of Hormuz and, therefore, control of the ships carrying the aforementioned one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. To make matters worse, the Trump regime also announced a 30-day lifting of Iranian oil sanctions with the aim of lowering U.S. gas prices, even as experts warned the move will have limited impact on prices here and will result in a $14 billion windfall for Iran. This “solution,” which is both illogical and self-defeating, boggles the mind.

All of this, of course, benefits China, our greatest and most powerful adversary. China has been gaining an advantage over us in numerous ways in the realms of trade, diplomacy, and soft power as the result of Donald’s nonsensical tariffs and disorganized foreign policy. The Iranian War continues this trend.

Which brings us to tonight’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It will be the first time Donald has attended since 2011. In response to this year’s invitation, he posted:

The White House Correspondents Association [WHCA] has asked me, very nicely, to be the Honoree at this year’s Dinner, a long and storied tradition since it began in 1924, under then President Calvin Coolidge. [It would be my] honor to accept their invitation.

Donald isn’t being “honored,” and the fact that he was invited is nothing new—as he himself said, it is tradition to invite the sitting president, and he was invited every year during his first term. This is the first time, however, that he hasn’t boycotted the event.

Hundreds of journalists, including Sam Donaldson, Dan Rather, and Ann Curry have signed an open letter asking the WHCA to “forcefully demonstrate opposition” to Donald’s “efforts to trample freedom of the press.” The letter continues:

The dinner has long served as a symbol of the vital and irreplaceable role of a free press in American democracy and a celebration of the First Amendment and the journalists who uphold it. [Donald’s] systematic, sustained, and unprecedented attacks on the free press... render his presence at such an event a profound contradiction of its purpose.

The collective weight of the administration’s actions — retaliatory access bans, coercive regulatory investigations, frivolous lawsuits against the press, defunding of public broadcasting, dismantling of international broadcasting, physical restrictions on journalists, personal verbal attacks on reporters, assaults on the media in official White House press releases and social media posts, the arrest of journalists, and the pardoning of those who committed violence against the press — represent the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom of the press by a sitting American president.

Donald’s useless daughter-in-law, Lara, said on Fox that Donald:

has been preparing to go into this snake pit his entire life.

Which tells you that his opinion of his hosts and those they pretend to represent has not changed. So, what has?

Donald’s appearance signals his belief that he has vanquished his enemy and this is a victory lap.

As my friend, Brian Karem, put it:

[Donald] has, like Kathy Bates did to James Caan in Misery, hobbled the press.

The difference is that for the most part, corporate media corporations have submitted willingly to the hobbling or, worse, intentionally hobbled itself either to do Donald’s bidding, further enrich their shareholders, or both. By extending the invitation and allowing Donald to give a speech in which he will no doubt launch even more attacks at journalists and journalism, the WHCA has chosen to participate in one of the greatest capitulations to the Trump regime of any entity since Donald first came into office in January 2017.

There is every reason to believe that capitulating in the hopes of some kind of reprieve is a failed strategy. Not only has Donald’s anti-journalism rhetoric become more flagrant and more frequent, more members of the executive branch are also using their not-inconsiderable power to settle scores.

FBI director Kash Patel is suing The Atlantic for $250 million over a well and deeply sourced story about his egregious behavior as that agency’s leader. And according to The New York Times, Patel ordered the FBI to begin

investigating a New York Times reporter last month after she wrote about the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, using bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation.

Brian outlines the problem in stark terms: standing up to Donald is

the only way to keep from becoming what the majority of the press is today: spineless and worthless. We have been belittled by the president, routinely called fake news and the ‘true enemy of the people.’ [Donald’s] cosplaying defense secretary has likened us to the Pharisees of the Bible who betrayed Jesus.

No one has ever tried so hard to destroy, demean and belittle free thought as Donald Trump.

In addition, he has aggressively acted to defund vital public media institutions like PBS and NPR.

The WHCA’s attempt to put on a show starring the man most responsible for the degradation of our media as if everything is just fine is grotesque and serves no one but Donald and his corporate overlords. The invitation and his appearance legitimize and empower a man who has single-handedly done the fourth estate untold harm while putting him in a position to do even worse.

On a personal level, perhaps worst of all, leadership at the WHCA is increasing the danger Donald poses to individual reporters and journalists, whom he has been attacking with increasing frequency. They are complicit and it is shameful.