Trump Correspondents' Dinner revenge plot: Insiders expose who he'll REALLY humiliate, his main target... and the 'fake news' scores he'll settle

By CHARLIE SPIERING, US POLITICAL REPORTER Published: 20:45, 23 April 2026 | Updated: 20:55, 23 April 2026 President Donald Trump returns to the White House Correspondents' Association  Dinner on Saturday for the first time ever as President. The President accepted the invitation to attend the dinner this year with First Lady Melania Trump, despite snubbing the event his entire first term and after he was sworn into a second term last year. 'President Trump looks forward to attending the dinner with our great First Lady, and he will give an exceptional speech,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Mail. 'It will be must see TV!' Sources close to the White House say MAGA world is eagerly anticipating the President’s speech on Saturday, which is expected to be lighthearted and funny. They also expect the President to roast the press and take some digs at some of his top targets. The media landscape has changed significantly since Trump's first term, offering him plenty of potential punchlines, sources told the Daily Mail.  Trump may call out some of the changes and gloat, for example, mocking MSNBC, the network he nicknamed as MSDNC, for changing their name to MSNow.  He might also tease CBS and their ongoing brand reboot after they were purchased by David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance Corporation, paying Trump $16 million for his future presidential library in order to settle a lawsuit he filed against the network.  ABC News also settled a lawsuit with Trump with a $15 million donation to his library, which the President may gloat about in his speech.  President Donald Trump returns to the White House correspondents' dinner on Saturday  White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt predicted the event would be 'must see TV' with Trump's appearance on Saturday  Ellison and Paramount Skydance is also set to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, which could lead to changes in the newsroom that the president loves to decry as 'fake news.'  The President may single out individual reporters at the White House for ridicule, such as CNN's Kaitlan Collins, whom he has criticized as 'stupid and nasty' and 'the worst.' He may also tease ABC News host George Stephanopoulos, whom he nicknamed 'Slopadopoulos' and 'one of the worst and most vile broadcasters in the business.' Many of his former media targets, however, such as Jim Acosta, ‘Sleepy Eyes’ Chuck Todd, and Don Lemon, who Trump branded as ‘the dumbest man in television,’ no longer work for a major news network.  Team Trump is not expecting a warm welcome for the President at the dinner. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, said she ‘literally felt like I was in a sea of people that hated me,’ when she attended the dinner in 2024, she told Meghan McCain in a recent podcast interview. The President, however, tends to thrive when he knows that the room hates him, sources told the Daily Mail, often offering a healthy dose of humor to lighten the mood.  ‘People probably already know this about the President, he is one of the funniest people that I have ever met,’ Lara Trump said. In preparation for his speech, Trump is expected to work with his usual team of speechwriters, but he also workshops some of his ideas with experts outside of the White House, people familiar with his process say. Donald Trump (2nd L) and his wife Melania (R) arrive for the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump arrive for the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in 2011 ‘I think everyone should get ready, because he’s going to do some roasting, and we know that he doesn’t hold anything back,’ Lara Trump said, predicting that the President was preparing to ‘have a good time.’  The President’s attendance at the dinner allows White House staffers to attend as guests of media organizations and even participate in some of the parties throughout the weekend including the Daily Mail’s reception with the British Embassy on Friday.  The President will likely deliver a speech akin to his speeches at the Al Smith Dinner in 2016 and 2024, one former Trump official told the Daily Mail, where he ruthlessly roasted his Democratic opponents like failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.  Former Trump officials predicted the event would be a wild success with the President attending. ‘The WHCA Dinner without President Trump is a snooze,’ Billy McLaughlin, former White House Director of Digital Content for President Trump told the Daily Mail. ‘With President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, it’s headline TV again.’ Trump has a complicated relationship with the press as he frequently ridicules reporters to their faces, files multimillion-dollar lawsuits against news organizations, and even threatens to pull their broadcast licenses.  Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal for reporting a 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein featuring Trump's signature and a lewd drawing of a naked woman. The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge last week. The President also filed a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times for acting as a 'full-throated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party' that was dismissed in 2025. At the same time, Trump has opened up unprecedented access to correspondents in the White House for questions and even personally takes their unsolicited phone calls. Trump is fully aware that journalists at the dinner will try to make a statement about press freedom, sources told the Daily Mail. Over 250 former media figures and White House correspondents signed a letter demanding that organizers of the dinner 'forcefully demonstrate opposition' to the President for threatening the freedom of the press.  That would play right into the President’s hands, former Trump officials told the Daily Mail. Donald Trump attends the White House Correspondents dinner in 2015 before he was elected President  Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer at the White House with President Trump's staff secretary Will Scharf  ‘I think the media is going to try to show him up,’ former White House official Sean Spicer told the Daily Mail. ‘He’ll always get the better of anyone, but I have a feeling that they are going to do everything they can to present themselves as victims.’ Spicer said any attempt to scold Trump on the freedom of the press would come off as ‘whiny,’ and would be a bad look for them. ‘The President is going to get the last word on this,’ he said. Trump’s return to the dinner as President has been long anticipated, as media figures speculated whether he would ever return to the event. As a private citizen, Trump attended the dinner on several occasions, including the 2011 dinner where President Barack Obama famously roasted him as he sat in the audience.  That dinner took place just three days after Trump forced questions surrounding Obama's birth certificate back into the mainstream media, prompting the President to release the document to the public.   ‘We decided to poke fun at it,’ Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau recalled afterward, noting that he was on the team that threw some of the jokes together about Trump that Obama ‘loved’ and included in his speech. Obama joked that now that his birth certificate was released, Trump could focus on other conspiracy theories and his reality TV show The Celebrity Apprentice. He also ridiculed Trump's 'credentials' as a potential presidential candidate. 'Say what you will about Mr. Trump, he certainly would bring some change to the White House,' he joked, pointing to a screen illustrating the White House remodeled into a Casino and resort. The exact impact of the 2011 White House correspondents' dinner on the future of American politics has long been debated.  The idea that Trump was motivated by the dinner’s comedy routine to run for President was perpetuated by longtime political strategist Roger Stone. President Barack Obama laughs during speech prep for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner with his aides, from left, David Litt, Senior Presidential Speechwriter, Director of Speechwriting Cody Keenan and Press Secretary Josh Earnest Trump aide Dan Scavino revealed in a recent interview what the mood was like after the 2011 dinner ‘I think that is the night that he resolves to run for president. I think he is kind of motivated by it … “Maybe I’ll just run. Maybe I’ll show them all,”’ Stone reflected in an interview with PBS in September 2016. Trump has always maintained that he enjoyed the evening and that the public mockery of him had nothing to do with his decision to run for president. ‘It had nothing to do with my running for president, I actually enjoyed it,’ Trump told the hosts of 'The Five' in a recent interview about the dinner. He recalled telling his wife, Melania, that he thoroughly enjoyed himself. ‘I love this, I’m having a good time, because every joke was about me and I sort of liked it, I can handle that stuff,’ he said. But a recent interview with Dan Scavino, one of his most loyal and longstanding employees, indicates that Trump woke up the morning after the dinner with new focus on the idea of running for president.  ‘When he came up for breakfast on, I think it was a Sunday morning, after he went to the White House Correspondents' dinner … he had that look in his eye,’ Scavino recalled in an interview with the Katie Miller podcast. In response to his boss’s questions about the evening and his political future, Scavino said he enthusiastically endorsed the idea of a presidential campaign. ‘I said, sir, you should run for president. You should run for President. You would win. You would be an awesome President,’ he recalled. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 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