Don Lemon laid into the WHCA for inviting Donald Trump to the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Dinner — an invitation the president accepted for the first time in his two terms.
While on Thursday’s episode of “Clock It” on MS NOW, Lemon expressed his disappointment in the White House Correspondents Association for extending an invite to the president for their annual dinner after a year of red-taping and persecuting journalists. He called it a “slap in the face” to reporters and Americans at large.
“I think that they could be doing a better job and I am very disappointed that they invited Donald Trump to the White House Correspondents Dinner because he does not believe in the First Amendment,” Lemon said of WHCA leaders. “It’s a slap in the face to the American people that they even invited him.”
“Clock It” co-host Eugene Daniels also served as WHCA president in 2024-2025 term and defended the group and their invite, explaining that he invited the president and Karoline Leavitt personally just a year ago. Daniels maintained that the night is about honoring journalists, not the president.
Watch the full interview below:
“Now, what’s really important, what I said in the room that day is that the dinner is not about the president,” Daniels said. “The people getting lauded are not the president. It’s not the administration. We do not invite the President of the United States only when they are someone who loves reporters and they love the First Amendment. You invite them because they should, right? And what we tried to do last year and what I assume they’re going to try and do this year is remind this president, remind this administration, that at the end of the day, the First Amendment and journalists are key to democracy.”
Lemon responded to Daniels assertion that tradition should be upheld to hold court with the president and his administration by saying, “I disagree with everything that you just said.”
“Let me tell you why: I am living example of the president who does not care about the first amendment,” Lemon said. “And a president who would rather jail reporters or journalists than hear the truth does not deserve the honor or the privilege to be able to sit in a room of people who do that. Tradition is not law, and we don’t live in traditional times.
“I think the best way to give the message to this president is to not invite him to an event that is based on the very first amendment of the Constitution, which is Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press,” Lemon continued. “That’s what we are honoring. And if we are not honoring that president or the White House spokesperson, than why did you invite them? Send a message to them. You don’t believe in the first amendment? You insult reporters? You call them names? You jail journalists? Then you are not even worthy of being a part of this.”
For the first time, Trump will attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as a sitting president, breaking a years-long boycott that lasted throughout his first term and into his second.
Lemon was arrested in Los Angeles on Jan. 30 for reporting from an anti-ICE protest in a Minnesota church.
“For more than 30 years I’ve been a journalist and the power and protection of the First Amendment has been the underpinning of my work for the First Amendment, the freedom of the press, the bedrock of our democracy,” he said after pleading not guilty on Feb. 13, adding: “I will not be intimidated, I will not back down. I will fight these baseless charges, and I will not be silenced.”
