White House Correspondents Association: ‘An Attack On Any Of Us Is An Attack on All Of Us’
Patrick Howley
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White House Correspondents Association president Jeff Mason of Reuters attacked President Donald Trump from the podium at his Correspondents Dinner and pledged that the mainstream press will “remain vigilant.”
“An attack on any of us is an attack on all of us…There are threats to press freedoms here in the United States. We must remain vigilant. The world is watching,” Mason said in his attack speech against Trump.
“This year looks a little different,” Mason said, referring to Trump’s absence from the glitzy event to instead hold a rally in Pennsylvania.
“We are here to celebrate the press, not the presidency,” Mason said.
“The press is still in the White House briefing room and we are still on Air Force One…With all the tension in the relationship, that has sometimes been overlooked,” Mason noted. He made reference to “one notable and lamentable exception” when reporters were kept out of the press room. Trump revoked CNN’s press credentials during a briefing that occurred during CPAC.
“Undermining that by seeking to de-legitimize journalists is dangerous to a healthy republic,” Mason said of Trump.
“We are not Fake News. We are not failing news organizations. And we are not the enemy of the American people,” Mason said to big applause.
Mason thanked Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for being there, then the event handed out scholarships to a diverse array of students from Howard University, Columbia, Northwestern University, and Berkeley, where riots have been raging for the cause of shutting down conservatives’ free speech.
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