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When guests arrive for the rescheduled White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner<\/a> on Friday at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, security will be much tighter, the guest list smaller, the partying pared down.<\/p>\n That much, the correspondents\u2019 association can control. <\/p>\n What remains out of its control \u2014 and perhaps the biggest question \u2014 is what the dinner\u2019s most prominent guest, President Donald Trump<\/a>, will bring to the table.<\/p>\n Call it White House Dinner 2.0, or Take Two, or, in Trump\u2019s own words, a \u201cHOT ticket.\u201d <\/p>\n The big unknown is whether Trump will bring the fighting words (\u201crather nasty,\u201d he said) against the press he\u2019d planned to deliver in April \u2014 before the event descended into chaos when a gunman stormed a security checkpoint<\/a>, forcing an evacuation of the room.<\/p>\n \u201cThe president looks forward to finishing what he started,\u201d press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday, confirming Trump’s attendance. \u201cI encourage everyone watching tomorrow night to tune in for what promises to be a very entertaining and memorable evening.”<\/p>\n Trump has been coy about what he might say<\/p>\n As for Trump himself, he indicated last month he wasn\u2019t sure. \u201cI don\u2019t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out,” the Republican president wrote on his Truth Social platform. \u201cIn any event, it will be a \u2018HOT\u2019 ticket!\u201d<\/p>\n Besides the pared-down approach, there is another change at Friday\u2019s dinner: two additional awards. One will be presented to Victor Gonzales, the Secret Service agent who was staffing a security checkpoint in April and was struck in his protective vest<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cOfficer Gonzales \u2026 ran toward danger so that thousands of others could make it home safely,” Weijia Jiang, WHCA president, said in a statement. \u201cHis courage stemmed from a dedication to service, which we are looking forward to honoring this week.\u201d<\/p>\n A second award will be presented to the staff of the Washington Hilton hotel, site of the first dinner. <\/p>\n Jiang and her fellow board members worked hard to bring about a WHCA dinner 2.0, not wanting to let a violent act<\/a> remain the final image. Announcing the rescheduling, she emphasized the dinner\u2019s stated purpose: \u201ca celebration of a free press and the vital role of journalism in our democracy for over a century.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe will not allow an act of violence to have the last word, especially during a year when we are reflecting on the 250th anniversary of America<\/a> and everything we stand for,\u201d Jiang said.<\/p>\n There’s still lots of criticism of the event<\/p>\n But it\u2019s also clear that some people feel the dinner should not be rescheduled at all. <\/p>\n Many never felt the dinner was a good look in the first place, with the sight of journalists in formal wear cozying up to their sources, or the objects of their reporting.<\/p>\n \u201cIt undermines the public faith in how the press does its work, and it makes it look like we are pals with the people we cover,\u201d Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, said when the deliberations were taking place.<\/p>\n The new dinner comes during a time of fast-increasing tension between the media and a president who, in his second term, has tried to exert pressure on media outlets he is unhappy with in a variety of ways. That pressure has ranged from sanctions against members of the White House press corps to regulatory actions through the Federal Communications Commission<\/a> to outright lawsuits.<\/p>\n Those tensions have only escalated since April, with the latest example reaching a New York courtroom on Thursday. There, criticized by a federal judge for sloppy legal work, the government withdrew subpoenas<\/a> that would have compelled three New York Times reporters to testify about their sources for articles about Trump\u2019s Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet<\/a>.<\/p>\n