White House Scared of Eating Dinner With a Bunch of Nerds

President Donald Trump is once again snubbing the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner, choosing instead to spend his Saturday evening surrounded by adoring MAGA chuds in Green Bay, WI (pop: cheese). And now he’s not letting any of his staffers yuk it up at the self-congratulatory “nerd prom,” either.

White House staffers were notified on Tuesday morning they had been ordered to boycott the dinner by Cabinet Secretary Bill McGinley, Politico reported. McGinley’s formalized thou shalt not attend message seemed to be “coming from the president himself,” per the site.

Trump’s moratorium on fun (if rubbing elbows with cable news cutouts like Wolf Blitzer and listening to the uproarious comedy stylings of keynote speaker, uh, presidential historian Ron Chernow can be considered “fun”) is all the more hilariously tragic when you consider the fact that there were plenty of White House staffers apparently excited about going in the first place. As CNN’s Jake Tapper reported today, staffers had tried to talk Trump into letting them attend.

White House Correspondent’s Association President Olivier Knox responded to reports of the president-ordered boycott, saying: “We’re looking forward to an enjoyable evening of celebrating the First Amendment and great journalists past, present, and future.”

Last year’s WHDC was marred by totally manufactured controversy after comedian Michelle Wolff mocked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as a liar—something Sanders herself eventually admitted to, before quickly walking back her brief moment of honesty.

It seems as if rather than risk having his vipers’ den of totally loyal, not-at-all disgruntled staffers sit in moderately close proximity to the press he so frequently decries as an “enemy of the people,” the president has instead chosen to pack up his toys (read: employees) and go home. Boo hoo.