From a 2016 Washington Post story by Roxanne Roberts headlined “I sat next to Donald Trump at the infamous 2011 White House Correspondents dinner”:
Regarding the vast mystery that is Donald Trump, one question eclipses all others: Why is the billionaire reality star running for president?
I don’t know. You don’t know. But a handful of armchair psychoanalysts — reporters for major news organizations, no less — have decided that it all began at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where Trump was the butt of jokes by President Obama and “Saturday Night Live” comedian Seth Meyers.
Trump was so humiliated by the experience, they say, that it triggered some deep, previously hidden yearning for revenge. “That evening of public abasement, rather than sending Mr. Trump away, accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature in the political world,” wrote the New York Times.
Aside from the questionable premise that the Republican front-runner has ever had an unexpressed thought, there’s the problem of speculation based on nothing but YouTube clips of the night. The only person who knows definitively when or why he decided to run is Trump. . . .
I was there. Seated directly behind him, in fact, so that when I turned my chair to listen to the speeches, my head was precariously close to The Donald’s left ear and that golden blow-dried confection he calls his hair. In C-SPAN videos, I can be seen arching my head back rather than nuzzle his neck. Yes, I was that close . . . .
It helps to understand that the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner had devolved from a little-known media evening into a black-tie mash-up of the Super Bowl, the Oscars and Davos, Washington-style — thanks primarily to the presence of the president, which confers a gravitas that the evening no longer deserves, and an influx of Hollywood stars and corporate rubberneckers looking for free publicity. Now it’s a red-carpet conga line for anyone with enough power, fortune or fame to land a ticket.
Trump, the “Celebrity Apprentice” star, was a natural for the dinner: wildly popular, gregarious, huge. He came at the invitation of writer Lally Weymouth. The daughter of The Washington Post’s legendary Katharine Graham and mother of then-publisher Katharine Weymouth co-hosted the Washington Post-Newsweek reception for years and always invited her famous New York and D.C. friends as guests of the newspaper. . . .
Word that Trump was attending as a guest of The Post landed in the newsroom with a thud. Inviting a reality star was fine. Inviting a leading voice of the birthers was a problem for many reporters, who were concerned that it appeared as though one of America’s most respected newspapers was giving Trump (and by extension, birthers) credibility.
Trump arrived with his wife, Melania, at his side. He was gracious and engaging “as he greeted, charmed and flattered his way through the endless security line,” recalled Marcus Brauchli, The Post’s executive editor at the time. . . .
Thus commenced the annual ritual — introductory speeches that no one listened to, aggressive schmoozing, photo ops and other strange encounters. By the time the president got up to speak, the crowd had been drinking for more than three hours.
Obama opened his speech with a recording of the Hulk Hogan theme song “Real American” and his birth certificate pulsating on the video screen. He threw one-liners at VIPs in the crowd before turning to Trump halfway through the 19-minute routine.
“Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald,” Obama said. “And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter — like, did we fake the moon landing?. . .”
Then it was Meyers’s turn. The SNL veteran launched into what was essentially a 20-minute “Weekend Update” segment, with withering jabs at all. By the time he got to Trump, he was lobbing jokes like grenades:
“Donald Trump has been saying he will run for president as a Republican — which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke.”
“Trump owns the Miss USA Pageant, which is great for Republicans, because it will streamline their search for a vice president.”. . .
With cameras aimed at him, Trump smiled at Obama’s jokes and waved at the crowd. His response to Meyers was less lighthearted: As the comedian hammered him, the billionaire didn’t crack a smile.
“The president was making jokes about me,” he recalled this week. “I was having a great time. I was so honored. I was actually so honored. And honestly, he delivered them well.” But as for Meyers: “I didn’t like his routine. His was too nasty, out of order.”. . .
At the end of the dinner, Trump was swarmed by reporters demanding to know what he thought. He told them he’d had a great time and was honored to be skewered by the president. . . .
The next morning, the newspapers had a different version that boiled down to “Trump humiliated.” Trump says he was baffled by the headlines, because that wasn’t his take on the night. “I didn’t know that I’d be virtually the sole focus, and I guess when you’re leading in most of the polls, that tends to happen,” he told “Fox & Friends” the next morning. “I thought Seth Meyers, frankly, his delivery was not good — he’s a stutterer and he really was having a hard time.”. . .reason to pounce.
Never one to let facts get in the way of a good story, the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik decided that this was the night that changed everything. “Not only, as we did not know then, was President Obama in the midst of the operation that would lead shortly to Osama bin Laden’s killing,” he wrote last fall, “it was also the night when, despite that preoccupation, the President took apart Donald Trump, plastic piece by orange part, and then refused to put him back together again.”
Based on his seat a few tables away, Gopnik was not only able to observe Trump but apparently also believed that he could read Trump’s mind. “On that night, Trump’s own sense of public humiliation became so overwhelming that he decided, perhaps at first unconsciously, that he would, somehow, get his own back — perhaps even pursue the Presidency after all, no matter how nihilistically or absurdly, and redeem himself,” he wrote. . . .
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Roxanne Roberts is a reporter covering Washington’s social, political and philanthropic power brokers. She has been at The Washington Post since 1988, working for the Style section as a feature writer and columnist.
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