President Trump on Monday divulged his reason for not attending this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner in late April.
“Over the years you make a mistake, I fully understand when they hit you. But when they make stories up, when they create sources, ’cause I believe that sometimes they don’t have sources, you know, the sources don’t exist — sometimes they do exist. I’m not saying all sources, but I do believe that a lot of the sources are made up. A lot of the stories are made up. I believe a lot of, the stories are pure fiction, they just pull it out of air,” Trump told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” in an interview set to air Tuesday morning.
“Now, with all of that being said, I just thought it would be better if I didn’t do the dinner, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it next year but I just thought it would be better if I didn’t do it this year,” Trump added.
Over the weekend, Trump unexpectedly tweeted that he would not be attending the annual, high-class gathering at the Washington Hilton, but did not give a reason for his decision.
I will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2017
The Republican president also previewed what he will tell a joint session of Congress on Tuesday evening. His focus of the speech will be the military, border and deporting criminal illegal aliens.
Hollywood lambasted Trump during Sunday evening’s Academy Awards, but Trump said the attacks were an attempt to smear his name by calling him racist.
“Look, it just seems like the other side, whenever they’re losing badly, they always pull out the race card. I’ve watched it for years. I watched it against Ronald Reagan, I’ve watched it against so many other people,” Trump said. “And they always like pulling out the race card. In fact, I did much better than many other than other Republicans in the last election. I did much better with Hispanics, I did much better with African-Americans. If I didn’t do better, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
