President Donald Trump stood by awkwardly at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner as reporters for The Wall Street Journal won awards for their coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal that inspired the president to launch an unsuccessful $10 billion defamation lawsuit last year.
WSJ reporters were honored multiple times during Friday’s dinner. The president often shrugged or smiled as their reporting was described, and he shook some of the winners’ hands.
When it was his time to speak, the president joked that it had “not been an easy evening” hearing about their work.
“All these awards,” he said. “Do I have a say?”
Later, in the midst of a lengthy and often bitter rant against various members of the media, Trump repeatedly called the WSJ’s Josh Dawsey “unhireable.”
Trump has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. The president insists he cut ties with Epstein years before the wealthy pedophile — who died by suicide in a New York City jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges — was under investigation.
Last July, Trump sued The Wall Street Journal, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the journalists and publishers who contributed to the WSJ’s reporting on an alleged birthday letter he sent to Epstein, which the president claims does not exist.
The newspaper published a 50th birthday greeting to Epstein from 2003, which included a message that claimed Epstein was his “pal” and “we have certain things in common, Jeffrey.”
“Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” reads another part of the alleged message, which was written inside of an outline of a woman’s body.
Trump has repeatedly denied writing the letter and denied that a signature on the document is his.
The defamation suit claimed “no authentic letter or drawing exists” and blasted the story as a “false, malicious, defamatory, FAKE NEWS ‘article’ in the useless ‘rag’ that is.”
In April, a federal judge determined the president failed to prove that the article was published with “actual malice,” the legal standard for proving defamation.
But the judge opened the door for the president to file an amended complaint.
The publication of the letter joined a wave of reporting into the government’s handling of Epstein investigations after Trump’s Department of Justice sought to draw federal probes to a close.
Trump’s lawsuit “does not include a single plausible allegation” that The Wall Street Journal knowingly published false statements about him, lawyers for the defendants wrote in response to the lawsuit last year.
The article is “true,” they wrote, and the evidence is publicly available for anyone to see.
