I'm Sorry to Report That Once Again, Trump Will Skip the White House Correspondents' Dinner

Donald Trump, known for…many things…but not his self-deprecating humor, has elected to skip the White House Correspondents Dinner for a third year in a row.

No surprise there, but the news does offer an opportunity to revel in the sweet memory of last year’s dinner, in which host Michell Wolf delivered an onslaught of supercharged barbs that elicited small, righteous gasps from certain reporters still clinging heroically to the long-extinct notion of “precedent.” (Or pandering to their sources, either/or.)

“The dinner is boring and so negative that we’re going to hold a very positive rally,” Trump told reporters on Saturday, according to The Hill. (To be fair, you could easily replace “the dinner” with any of the innumerable presidential duties Trump has neglected and it would still be a pretty accurate sentence.) Too bad: Having learned how uncooperative comedians can be, this year’s host will be historian Ron Chernow, who won a Pulitzer Prize for biography for his book Washington: A Life. I would have enjoyed watching Trump’s face as the rotted gears of his brain labored to avert shutdown, since everyone knows the only thing Trump detests more than laughter is learning.

Wolf, who you’ll be positively shocked to know remains unaffected following last year’s blowback over her remarks, made it clear she still has plenty of material in the can if the occasion calls for it. Following Trump’s announcement, she addressed the issue at an event she attended on Friday:

“You know, he’s probably just really busy because he’s got to golf and honestly, I don’t know if anyone really wants to watch him eat. So I think it’s for the best probably,” she said, according to The Hill. “He doesn’t have a big enough spine to attend. A person who can’t take someone making fun of them, I don’t really care about.”

Thoughts and prayers to the president during his brave battle against windmill cancer, for which there is no known cure.