GUEST OF DISHONOR

MAGA-Curious CBS Boss Invites Pentagon Pete to Free Speech Event

Donald Trump will also attend the black-tie dinner for the first time as president.

Bari Weiss, the editor-in-chief at the now Trump-friendly CBS News, has invited Pete Hegseth to attend the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, according to a report.

The glitzy black-tie event, where journalists, cable news anchors, and other high-profile members of the media dine with top White House officials, will take place at the Washington Hilton on April 25.

Donald Trump has announced that he will attend this year’s celebration of the First Amendment for the first time as president and is expected to sit at the CBS News table.

CBS News, which has experienced dwindling viewership and mass layoffs under Weiss’ tenure, has also invited the defense secretary to the WHCA dinner, according to Breaker.

It is unclear whether Hegseth has accepted. Meanwhile, Trump will sit at a table on the dais alongside the network’s senior White House correspondent, Weijia Jiang, who is also president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

CBS News was one of several outlets that quit the Pentagon press corps rather than comply with the defense secretary’s new rules, which severely restricted journalists’ access and coverage. The policy included demands that outlets publish only information approved by the Pentagon.

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Breaker also reports that Fox News will host Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at the dinner, while the New York Post will host Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz.

The Wall Street Journal will be joined at the event in defense of the First Amendment by former Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita. In January 2026 he dropped a lawsuit against the Daily Beast over an article reporting that millions of dollars had flowed into his company, Advancing Strategies LLC, while he was managing Trump’s 2024 campaign. LaCivita had demanded triple damages and an apology but settled before he had to hand over his bank accounts and tax returns.

Trump has boycotted the WHCD every year he was in office. Before 2017, every president had attended the dinner at least once since it was first held in 1921.

Trump endured a traumatic moment at the event in 2011, when he attended as a guest of The Washington Post, and President Barack Obama and Seth Meyers brutally mocked his presidential ambitions on stage.

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At the time, Trump was spearheading the racist “birther” conspiracy theory against Obama, questioning whether the president had a U.S. birth certificate and suggesting the Hawaii-born president was actually born in Kenya.

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Trump, who routinely attacks the press and what he refers to as “fake news,” may have an easier time this year. The White House Correspondents’ Association has invited celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman to entertain guests rather than booking a comedian to roast the guests.

“In honor of our Nation’s 250th Birthday, and the fact that these ‘Correspondents’ now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country, the G.O.A.T., according to many, it will be my Honor to accept their invitation,” Trump wrote in a March 2 Truth Social post.

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