President Trump and most members of his administration steered clear of the annual Gridiron Club dinner on Saturday, where politicians and the press usually toast and lightly roast one another.
The president wanted nothing to do with it.
It was Saturday night in Washington, and many of the town’s top reporters, editors and television anchors were gathered in the subbasement of a Hyatt hotel. They were there for the annual white-tie dinner thrown by the Gridiron Club, an association of journalists that was formed in 1885. Ordinarily, presidents go with high-ranking members of their administration. It’s a chance for politicians and the press to toast and lightly roast one another (“singe, not burn” is the club’s motto). It is a clubby and cozy affair. This year it seemed curdled.
“I invited the president, the vice president, the national security adviser and the interior secretary,” said Judy Woodruff of PBS News, who is the club’s president. “All declined.”
“I was told the secretary of state would not be available,” she added.
Mr. Trump’s absence — and that of any members of his inner circle — was yet the latest reminder in a long string of them that, this go-round as president, he has no intentions of wooing the Washington establishment or playing any of its games. He barely wanted to play the first time he was here, but there were some small efforts on his part back then. He did go to the Gridiron dinner in 2018, and his daughter Ivanka went as an emissary the next year.
The Gridiron Club had been trying in vain for weeks to lure members of his cabinet to Saturday’s dinner. Only one showed up: Scott Turner, the secretary of housing and urban development. Margaret Brennan of CBS News joked that Mr. Turner was “whatever the opposite of designated survivor is.”
Once word spread that the president and his entourage were staying away, Republicans who had initially planned to attend, like Chris LaCivita, one of Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign managers, and Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, bailed on the event. Those who did show up seemed to regret it. Daniel Driscoll, the Army secretary, walked out during a joke about Vice President JD Vance.
One White House official who skipped the dinner privately dismissed the club and its members as exactly the kinds of elites Mr. Trump’s base sent him to Washington to destroy.