The annual custom of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner suddenly seems uncomfortable if not untenable: Journalists mingling with Trump administration aides who loathe them, celebrities decrying Trump White House policies, and an entertainment headliner grappling with the tone and boldness of jokes about President Trump himself. 
 
 But Samantha Bee is not waiting to see how this year’s soiree unfolds or if those involved decide to hold it at all. 
 
 Instead, Ms. Bee, host of the topical TBS comedy show “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee,” and her colleagues are planning a counter-event that will take place in Washington on April 29, the same night as the Correspondents’ Association dinner. 
 
 This alternative gala, which is being called “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” and was announced on Monday, will be at the Willard Hotel. Ms. Bee said that it was not an attempt to comment on or compete with that other, better-known banquet, but a night to include jokes about Mr. Trump that she and like-minded comedians want to make. ||||| The president tweeted his announcement on Saturday. 
 
 Donald Trump will be skipping the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 29. 
 
 "I will not be attending the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!" Trump tweeted on Saturday afternoon. 
 
 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 
 
 Trump's decision comes after CNN, The New York Times, Politico and several other major media outlets were blocked from attending a Friday White House press briefing. The president also continued to express his dislike for "fake news" media and targeted reporters' use of anonymous sources while speaking to the Conservative Political Action Committee on Friday. 
 
 White House Correspondents' Association president Jeff Mason said in a statement that the group has noted Trump's announcement and is still looking forward to the April 29 dinner, "which has been and will continue to be a celebration of the First Amendment and the important role played by an independent news media in a healthy republic. 
 
 "We look forward to shining a spotlight at the dinner on some of the best political journalism of the past year and recognizing the promising students who represent the next generation of our profession," the statement concludes. 
 
 WHCA statement on 2017 White House Correspondents' Dinner pic.twitter.com/mMOXaozwHj — Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) February 25, 2017 
 
 Bloomberg recently canceled their annual party in celebration of the dinner. The business outlet usually co-hosts the event with Conde Nast's Vanity Fair, but the magazine pulled out earlier this month. The New Yorker also canceled its event that evening. 
 
 Sources previously told THR the casts of House of Cards, Veep and Scandal will also likely not be in attendance, though they were present at the event during the Obama years. 
 
 The same evening as the dinner, TBS' Samantha Bee is planning her own event, a "Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner" at the Willard Hotel in the nation's capital, raising funds to support the Committee to Protect Journalists. 
 
 A host has yet to be named for the Correspondents' dinner. Stephen Colbert, however, said he would be "honored" to take the stage, and Trevor Noah told THR he would be up for the job if asked. 
 
 Trump's decision is historical as it's been a longtime tradition that the president make an appearance at the dinner. He will be the first president to skip the dinner since Ronald Reagan in 1981, who missed the dinner while recovering from an assassination attempt, but still delivered remarks over the phone. ||||| Comedian Michelle Wolf's biting routine at Saturday's 2018 White House Correspondents' Association dinner has triggered one of Washington's most recurring conversations: Is one night of pomp and politics worth the headaches that usually follow? 
 
 Almost immediately after Wolf, best known as a correspondent on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah," left the stage at the Washington Hilton, those who pack into the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room on a daily basis began to distance themselves from her performance. A number of journalists deemed her act too caustic. 
 
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 "The spirit of the event had always been jokes that singe but don’t burn. Reporters who work with her daily appreciate that @presssec was there," NBC News White House correspondent Kelly O'Donnell wrote on Twitter. 
 
 As consternation over Wolf's jokes continued, White House Correspondents' Association president Margaret Talev said the comedian's monologue "was not in the spirit of that mission," on a night when the association wanted promote a unifying message. 
 
 "Last night's program was meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting and scholarship winners, not to divide people," Talev said in a statement to the White House press corps. 
 
 The outgoing president of the WHCA, Talev said the organization is committing to hearing from members about format of the dinner going forward. 
 
 President Donald Trump said Sunday evening that the dinner "a total embarrassment to everyone associated with it" and that it is time to change the format or kill it entirely. For the second straight year, the president skipped the gathering instead holding a campaign-style rally, this time in Michigan. 
 
 "The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a failure last year, but this year was an embarrassment to everyone associated with it," the president tweeted. "The filthy “comedian” totally bombed (couldn’t even deliver her lines-much like the Seth Meyers weak performance). Put Dinner to rest, or start over!" 
 
 At its core, the dinner is supposed to be a celebration of the First Amendment, an opportunity to laud the young journalists who have won the association's scholarships, and a place to applaud the current journalists whose work illuminates the public's understanding of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. 
 
 “My goal in putting together last night's dinner was to unify the room and the country around journalism and the First Amendment, and I shared what I believe about those subjects in my own remarks,” Talev, a Bloomberg correspondent and president of the association, told POLITICO earlier. 
 
 “The association, by tradition, does not preview or censor the entertainer's remarks,” Talev continued. “Some of them made me uncomfortable and did not embody the spirit of the night. And that is protected by the First Amendment. I appreciated Sarah Sanders for joining us at the head table and her grace through the program.” 
 
 A persistent criticism of the glitzy dinner is that it fuels perceptions of excessive chumminess between members of the press and the government officials they’re expected to hold accountable, a rationale that prompted The New York Times to back out more than a decade ago. But some journalists feared that Saturday’s dinner could lead to a different perception, of being seen as the opposition to the president. 
 
 “If the #WHCD dinner did anything tonight, it made the chasm between journalists and those who don't trust us, even wider,” tweeted Meg Kinnard, a South Carolina-based reporter for The Associated Press. “And those of us based in the red states who work hard every day to prove our objectivity will have to deal with it.” 
 
 New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker concluded on Twitter after the event, “Unfortunately, I don't think we advanced the cause of journalism tonight.” And Baker suggested in a reply to comedian Kathy Griffin that he’d “vote to leave the comedy acts to comedy shows and stick to journalism at journalism dinners.” 
 
 "First Amendment would probably be OK without the dinner," CNBC's John Harwood added. 
 
 Amid the backlash, some of Wolf's fellow comedians came to her defense, praising the boldness of her approach. 
 
 "Few people go to DC and accomplish what they set out to do while staying true to themselves," Meyers, the 2011 dinner host, wrote on Twitter. "@michelleisawolf is one of those people." 
 
 If Washington can't take a joke, ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel added, it should look elsewhere for future entertainment. 
 
 "Dear "the media" - @michelleisawolf was FUNNY," Kimmel, the 2012 host, wrote on Twitter. "Hire a juggler next year." 
 
 poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201804/3840/1155968404_5777963819001_5777923636001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true 
 
 Controversies emanating from the evening are nothing new. 
 
 In 2006, “Colbert Report” host Stephen Colbert stayed in character as he scorched President George W. Bush and his administration (along with the press for its coverage during the run-up to the Iraq War). Years later, Colbert said people still ask him what Bush, who was seated just steps away, told him after the routine. 
 
 In 2016, comedian Larry Wilmore ended his jokes by saluting President Barack Obama, who was attending his final WHCD in office, with "Yo, Barry, you did it, my n---a. You did it." After the hand wringing over his use of the N-word, Wilmore defended his decision, saying he was trying to take back a word that had been used to denigrate black men for centuries. 
 
 But Saturday was supposed to be different. 
 
 In 2017, Trump became the first president since Ronald Reagan in 1981 to skip the gathering (although Reagan, who was recovering from an assassination attempt, still called in) and not a single Trump White House aide attended. This year, though, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sat at the head table, and counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters beforehand that Trump had encouraged his staff to attend. 
 
 "He encourages us to have fun," Conway told CNN before the festivities began. 
 
 "Tonight’s #WHCD was a disgrace," former White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Twitter afterward. 
 
 White House director of strategic communications Mercedes Schlapp and her husband, conservative activist Matt Schlapp, walked out early. “Enough of elites mocking all of us,” he tweeted. (Still, the Schlapps later attended NBC and MSNBC’s after-party.) 
 
 Former chief of staff Reince Priebus characterized the event afterward on Twitter as “another victory for @realDonaldTrump for not attending and proving his point once again.” 
 
 For the second year, Trump skipped the dinner and counterprogrammed it by holding a rally in which he vilified the “dishonest” and “phony” press and portrayed journalists as opposed to his presidency. 
 
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 While Wolf certainly had tough words for Trump, her jokes about Sanders' appearance and comparison to an "Uncle Tom" for white women left many journalists uneasy. 
 
 "That @PressSec sat and absorbed intense criticism of her physical appearance, her job performance, and so forth, instead of walking out, on national television, was impressive," New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman wrote on Twitter, a feeling many of her colleagues echoed. (“She killed her own message,” freelance journalist/author Seamus McGraw wrote of Wolf’s routine.) 
 
 Wolf replied to Haberman that the Sanders “jokes were about her despicable behavior” rather than her appearance. 
 
 In a later exchange with MSNBC's "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski — who said, “Watching a wife and mother be humiliated on national television for her looks is deplorable” — Wolf questioned why everyone was focusing their critiques on what she said about Sanders' appearance. 
 
 "Why are you guys making this about Sarah’s looks? I said she burns facts and uses the ash to create a perfect smoky eye," Wolf wrote on Twitter. "I complimented her eye makeup and her ingenuity of materials." 
 
 For all the early recriminations, some journalists and liberal commentators wondered whether journalists understood that the evening was intended to be in jest, and that the administration remains deeply unpopular. 
 
 “How self-regarding do you have to be to invite a comedian & then get upset that she makes jokes about the rich, famous, powerful people in the room?” tweeted The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald. “And how irrational do you have to be to think a comedian at a DC event is supposed to be reverent & sober in *the Trump era*?” 
 
 "I don’t think you fully appreciate the resentment towards media for normalizing the WH’s behavior," long time Hillary Clinton aide Philippe Reines wrote on Twitter, in reply to CNN's Jeff Zeleny and Baker. "There’a [sic] no greater example than Sanders mocking you daily for the whole country to watch." 
 
 Comedians have long complained that pleasing the audience at the Washington Hilton is a near-impossible task, leading Griffin to suggest it might be better for everyone just to have a "boring" evening. 
 
 "If you want to focus on the journalism, do a boring awards show. Journalism is all about the 1st Amendment," Griffin wrote on Twitter. "If you don't see the import of what @michelleisawolf did tonight, then you don't get it."
– If Donald Trump chooses to roast journalists, celebrities, and politicians at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, DC, this year, it'll be with the knowledge that he's being brutally mocked not too far away. Samantha Bee of TBS' Full Frontal says she'll host celebrities, journalists, and comedians at a Trump roast at the Willard Hotel in Washington on April 29. Bee tells the New York Times that the goal of the event, dubbed "Not the White House Correspondents' Dinner," is not to "supersede" the official dinner scheduled for the same night, but simply to "ensure that we get to properly roast the president." She promises "plenty of surprises," per Variety. "If you're not careful you just might learn something. Specifically, you'll learn how screwed we'd be without a free press," she adds. It's not yet clear when or how the event will be broadcast, or even who will attend, but Bee says proceeds will go to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Whether the official Correspondents' dinner will happen is also unclear given Trump's tumultuous relationship with the press, his history with the dinner, and "his oft-demonstrated thin skin," reports the Times. The Independent notes the dinner has been an annual occurrence since 1983.