The First Amendment

The dinner was Saturday. By Tuesday afternoon, the FCC was investigating ABC’s licenses and the DOJ had indicted James Comey for a beach photo. The press still won’t say what it’s watching.

Saturday night, in a ballroom packed with reporters and most of the federal government, the White House Correspondents’ Association threw its annual dinner. WHCA president Weijia Jiang of CBS had described it as a reminder of “what a free press means to this country and why it must endure.” Five hundred journalists, including Dan Rather and Jim Acosta, had signed a petition the week before begging the WHCA not to host Trump at all, writing that “this cannot be business as usual with the press standing up to applaud the man who attacks them on a daily basis.” The WHCA invited him anyway. He came. So did much of his cabinet.

By Tuesday afternoon, that same administration had ordered Disney to file early license renewals for every ABC television station it owns and indicted former FBI director James Comey for an Instagram post of seashells. Two federal actions, in two directions, against two different kinds of expression, in a single afternoon.

Trump is doing dictator things, expressing hostility to the very concept of free speech. The Washington press corps’ continued refusal to say so plainly, in news copy, not just in opinion columns, is part of why he keeps getting to do them.

---

---

Thursday to Tuesday

The joke aired Thursday. On his April 23 show, Jimmy Kimmel did a mock version of the Correspondents’ Dinner roast that wasn’t actually going to happen at the dinner itself (the WHCA went with a mentalist this year instead of a comedian). The Trumps were in the studio, sort of. Kimmel ran clips of them as cutaways while he played the comedian behind the podium. He got to Melania. “Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,” he said. Trump is 79. Melania is 56. The joke isn’t new. It hasn’t been new in centuries.

Saturday came the dinner. Cole Allen, a 31-year-old Caltech graduate from California, ran a Secret Service magnetometer at the Hilton with a shotgun, a pistol, and three knives. Allen was tackled and charged Monday with attempting to assassinate the president. The note he left for his family laid out his targets: Trump and his administration officials. The note doesn’t mention any inspiration from Jimmy Kimmel.