White House Correspondents’ Association Condemns Trump’s Talk of Revoking Press Credentials

The White House Correspondents’ Association shot back at President Trump after his latest criticism of the media on Wednesday.

“The Fake News is working overtime,” the president wrote on Twitter early Wednesday morning. “Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?

“Some may excuse the president’s inflammatory rhetoric about the media, but just because the president does not like news coverage does not make it fake,” WHCA president Margaret Talev responded in a statement posted to Twitter. “A free press must be able to report on the good, the bad, the momentous and the mundane, without fear or favor. And a president preventing a free and independent press from covering the workings of our republic would be an unconscionable assault on the First Amendment.”

The barbed back-and-forth follows close upon the WHCA’s heavily criticized annual dinner last month, which featured a controversial routine by comedian Michelle Wolf. Wolf’s performance, especially her scathing remarks about White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, were condemned by conservative and liberal journalists alike.

The president, who skipped the dinner to hold a campaign-style rally in Michigan instead, also weighed in, calling it “dead as we know it” and an “embarrassment to our great country.”