Washington — Contained in the kitchen on the Washington Hilton forward of Saturday night time’s White Home Correspondents’ Dinner are frenetic dinner preparations for about 2,600 individuals.
The correspondents’ dinner has been an annual custom since 1921, bringing collectively presidential comedy and the press corps, and the Hilton has been its house for 57 years.
The Washington Hilton can also be recognized for one of many darkest moments in presidential historical past. On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan had simply completed talking at a union conference and was rising from the lodge when he was struck by a bullet from would-be murderer John Hinckley Jr. .
Reagan survived and returned to the lodge lower than six months later.
Now, there’s a plaque that commemorates the assassination try. Shortly thereafter, a storage was constructed with a safe door so the presidential limousine can enter and exit with absolute safety. The storage entrance results in an extended hallway adorned with images of every president and first girl.
Each president since Lyndon Johnson has spoken right here, typically making a number of journeys a yr for fundraisers, conferences, and the Nationwide Prayer Breakfast.
President Trump speaks on the Nationwide Prayer Breakfast sponsored by the The Fellowship Basis on the Washington Hilton on Feb. 6, 2025, in Washington, D.C. The Nationwide Prayer Breakfast brings collectively members of Congress and leaders in fellowship and enterprise for prayer and dialogue.
Andrew Harnik / Getty Photographs
President Richard Nixon attended an inaugural ball on the Hilton in 1969, as did President Barack Obama 40 years later.
When the lodge opened in 1965, its double-arc design was an architectural anomaly in a staid capital metropolis. Its 30,000-square-foot ballroom is among the largest indoor gathering areas in D.C.
It’s large enough to host live shows, together with the likes of The Doorways in 1967 and Jimi Hendrix a yr later.
Saturday night time’s correspondents’ dinner will look a bit completely different. There will likely be no featured comic, and President Trump, who skipped each correspondents’ dinner in his first time period, is not going to attend. Author and performer Amber Ruffin had been introduced because the night time’s leisure in February. Nonetheless, Ruffin who has been crucial of Mr. Trump, was pulled from the occasion in March.
Regardless of the controversy, for the Hilton, that doesn’t change the crucial to serve.
“Pretty much, the day the event ends, we’re already planning for the next event,” lodge normal supervisor Ken Jarka mentioned.
And what’s going to outline a profitable correspondents’ dinner for the Hilton?
“No one is writing about us the next morning. How’s that?” quipped Jarka. Not a straightforward feat in a roomful of journalists.
Main Garrett
