Trump to skip dinner WHCA, will hold a rally instead

President Donald Trump announced Friday that he would once again give up the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents Association and instead hold a rally on the evening of the event.

"Because the dinner is so boring and so negative, we are going to have a very positive rally," Trump told reporters on Friday before his trip to Calexico, California.

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Trump did not attend the dinner, once an annual event for the president, since taking office. In 2017, no one from the White House attended dinner. Press officer Sarah Huckabee Sanders and other members of the administration attended the event of 2018.

Last year, the WHCA announced that presidential historian and author Ron Chernow would be this year's speaker, breaking with the tradition of hosting a comedian who typically bends the president in Washington. Trump was the subject of several jokes by comedian Seth Meyers at the 2011 dinner he attended.

Last year's host, actress Michelle Wolf, was the subject of intense criticism from the White House and some members of the media as a result of her intervention, especially for his jokes about Sanders.

Chernow is expected to talk about press freedom at the dinner on April 27.

Tensions between the White House and the press, which were never warm at first, intensified during the president's term. Trump has repeatedly called the media "false information" and "the enemy of the people" in response to a cover that he considers unfair. Press briefings, once daily in the White House, have become rare phenomena.

Trump said he had not yet determined the venue for his rally, but that he had limited it to three sites.

"Everyone wants it," he said. "It will be a big one."

"But the correspondents' dinner is too negative, I like positive things," added the president.