Tonight's annual White House Correspondents Dinner (WHCD), the incestuous mingling of Beltway journalists and the people they're supposed to be covering with a few celebrities sprinkled in, will be boycotted for the second year by neo-fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump. In fact, he's attending a self-gratifying campaign-style rally in Michigan instead, because of his deep-seated insecurity and need for constant adulation.
The WHCD was the site of Rump's very public humiliation at the hands of his detested predecessor, President Obama, in 2011. Rump had been the leader in the vile, racist birther smear campaign against Obama, and Obama had a lot of fun poking fun at Rump's petty ridiculousness as the whole ballroom laughed. What made the evening more memorable after Obama jabbed Rump about his lowbrow "Apprentice" show (featuring has-beens like Gary Busey and Meatloaf) was the fact that the raid on Abbottabad to capture or kill bin Laden had been launched that night. It was a huge achievement for Obama that further shamed Rump's hollow birther smear.
There's been reporting that Rump, humiliated and incensed at the roasting by a black man, no less, made up his mind to double-down on the birther smears, and to consider a run for the Presidency. Of course, like so many other things he says he's going to do, he declined to run the following year, knowing that Obama would beat his large, sorry ass. His 2016 run was based on racism, xenophobia and revenge against the President that shamed him, and he found enough haters and low-information voters to get the Rethuglican nomination and ultimately the Presidency. His animating purpose now is to vengefully undo Obama's legacy in domestic and foreign policy, not caring at all about what to replace it with as long as he gets his revenge seven years later.
(photo: Rump glowering as he's mocked at the 2011 WHCD. C-Span)
