On Saturday, President Donald Trump took to his Twitter account and announced that he wouldn't be be attending the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Moments later, the president was mocked across social media, and then trolled on cable news.
Trump the 'snowflake'
When it became clear that Donald Trump was going to become the new president on Election Day, all eyes turned to how he would handle the job as commander in chief.
Since that time, Trump's war of words with the media has escalated, reaching news lows with each passing day. Following his inauguration, the former host of "The Apprentice" continued to refer to the media as "fake news," blasting the press on a daily basis during his routine Twitter rants. Over the last 48 hours, Trump's feud with the press has continued, including ripping into the media during his speech at CPAC, and then banning select news outlets from Friday's press briefing at the White House. After announcing that he would not take part in the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a panel on CNN decided to speak out, as reported on February 25.
During a segment on CNN, host Brianna Keilar reported on Donald Trump's decision to ditch the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. "There is this big divide in that the press is being demonized by Pres. Trump in ways," Keilar said, before noting that Trump is also "being dishonest himself about some things." TV critic for the New York Times, Bill Carter, was also on the panel and was critical of the president for his constant outbursts at the press.
"This has reached a point where it's over the top, actually," Carter said, before noting that "any story that's critical of him (Donald Trump) now becomes 'fake.'" "It has a little bit of the quality of 'You can't fire me, I quit,'" Carter went on to say, in relation to the president avoiding the dinner.
"I know there's been a lot of criticism of Democrats for being 'snowflakes,' but it's sort of snowflake-y to me, to back out of this," Carter went on to say.
Next up
In addition to the criticism on cable news, Donald Trump also took heat across social media. Twitter users mocked the president, accusing him of being thin skinned for the not attending the event, while others called for actor Alec Baldwin to take his place.