Why Trump skipping the correspondents’ dinner is a good thing

Nerd Prom. One of the most exciting and anticipated nights on the D.C. calendar. When the most famous and powerful people not pretty enough for Hollywood congeal for a night of forced comedy, dad jokes and polite laughter.

Yes, it’s just about time again for the Ugly Man’s Oscars, that magical night every year since 1920 known as the White House Correspondent’s Association dinner. I poke fun out of love.

As painful as many years have been, I have always enjoyed watching the canned laughs and bumbled delivery, partially because it was somehow reassuring to see the acrimony of Washington get set aside for an evening, and partially because it gave me hope that if these people can make a room laugh, anyone can.

{mosads}Nor was it always without genuine entertainment. In my professional opinion as a semi-pro comic, Stephen Colbert’s 2006 turn as host, in which he relentlessly piled on George W. Bush’s many failures to a cold room of stoic and unamused Republicans was some of the best and bravest comedy I’d ever seen. It was one of the performances that eventually crystalized into my desire to do stand up and chuck bombs at the powerful.

Last year’s extravaganza, Obama’s final appearance, featured Keegan-Michael Key’s inspired character Luther, the President’s Anger Translator, which cemented both Key and Peele as a comedy powerhouse, and President Obama as one of the most self-aware, relatable, and hilarious Presidents in history.

More darkly, there is every reason to believe the assault Donald Trump’s ego suffered under the skillful barbs of President Obama and Seth Meyers in 2011 cemented his decision to run for president and extract his revenge on, well, the totality of life on Earth.

At its best, the White House Correspondent’s Dinner is a celebration of the press, their relationship with the government, and the First Amendment itself. But this year comes with a twist of drama and palace intrigue never seen before. 

Saturday night, Donald Trump announced that he would not be attending the event, the first time a sitting president has declined in thirty-six years. The last President to do so was President Reagan in 1981, who had the understandable excuse of being in recovery from an assassin’s bullet.

Richard Nixon also declined the invitation, as he was embroiled in the Watergate Scandal at the time and cruising towards forced resignation, which seems the more apt comparison.

Trump’s decision to withdraw from the festivities comes on the heels of a mini-scandal of his own last week when at the CPAC gathering, his press secretary, Sean Spicer, locked out several major news outlets including CNN, the New York Times, LA Times, Politico, and The Hill from a press briefing. This in the same week that Trump repeatedly referred to the free press as the enemy of the American people both in tweets and in speeches.

Trump’s animosity towards the press is nothing new. 

Despite the fact media time was the  lifeblood of his campaign, he has always held them in disdain, culminating in acts of intimidation, harassment and even physical violence against journalists such as Chris Morris of TIME, and even Michelle Fields, then of Breitbart. His constant repetition of “Fake News” is designed to delegitimize the entirety of the Fourth Estate and minimize it as a threat to his unopposed and unprecedented power grab.

Which is why, this year, the focus and format of the Correspondent’s Dinner must change.

Comedians like myself, and far more famous and talented individuals like Colbert, Lewis Black, and the writers of SNL can handle the sarcasm and satire. The White House Correspondent’s Association, however, has other talents it needs to tap. Instead of celebrating the First Amendment, I call on professional journalists to defend it. You have two months ahead of you, and a historic opportunity.

The time of access journalism is closing, at least for now. The time of passively absorbing daily briefings is over. Trump has made that abundantly clear. It’s time to return to the heyday of investigative reporting. Subscriptions are soaring. Money is pouring into newsrooms.

Use it and the next two months to dig deeper and harder than you ever have. Make contacts among White House staff, the FBI, and the Intelligence Community, all of which have come under attacks from the same common enemy. The field is rich with opportunities to find the next Deep Throat. Probe into Trump’s alleged sexual assaults, his taxes, conflicts of interest, Emoluments Clause violations, and his campaign’s collusion with Russian Intelligence.

Build the case. Form the narrative. Then, in two months, when all eyes are on you in DC, don’t bring out Alec Baldwin in an orange wig (no matter how much I want to see that).

Introduce Dan Rather. Let the wrongly-discredited voice of generations tell the true story of how our democracy was stolen on November 7th, 2016. Drop truth-bomb after truth-bomb, until there’s nothing of the flimsy, fraudulent, façade Trump has built left standing.

My friends and colleagues in comedy will take it from there. We need material to build our next wave of attacks out of. The secret of great comedy is every joke needs a kernel of truth at its center, otherwise is withers and dies in the field.

And next year, after Trump has followed Nixon into humiliation and infamy, things can return to normal. We’ll give you your annual open mic night back. But right now, we need you to be journalists. We need you to find the truth, before the very concept of truth is lost to time.

Patrick Tomlinson is an author, stand up comic and regular contributor to the Hill on state, local and national politics. Follow him on Twitter @stealthygeek.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.