WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump headlined a scaled-down White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday, three months after the original event was cut short by a gunman who allegedly sought to assassinate the president.

“Tonight we come back to answer that heinous attack with unwavering resolve,” Trump told hundreds of assembled journalists and senior Washington officials.

The president in a long speech at times criticized several reporters in the room by name — sometimes in searing terms — though he said ultimately he has tremendous respect for the profession of journalism and the press in the room. He suggested he believes in the idea of a free press maybe more than anyone else and pitched himself as the most transparent president in U.S. history.

The rescheduled event was held at the Waldorf Astoria — formerly the Trump International Hotel — near the White House rather than the Washington Hilton, amid questions about security shortcomings at the original gathering.

It was Trump’s first time speaking at the annual event, which he did not attend during his first term. He said he plans to return in 2027.

He joked it was tough to sit through a string of awards to reporters for stories critical of his administration, one of which went to the Wall Street Journal for coverage of the relationship between Trump and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that prompted a $10 billion lawsuit from the president against the newspaper. Trump shook the reporters’ hands after they were presented with the award.

Trump has a long history of lambasting reporters and their news organizations as “fake news” and other pejorative terms. His administration recently subpoenaed a handful of New York Times journalists over their reporting about safety concerns related to Trump’s Qatari-donated Air Force One. The Justice Department dropped the subpoenas on Thursday under pressure from a federal judge.

Yet Friday the president said he decided to go easier on the media than he would’ve in April. “Oh, that was gonna be a doozy. I was so psyched,” he said. “I was gonna rip people.”

Still, Trump sharply criticized several of the assembled journalists, and contested without evidence the accuracy of some of the prize-winning entries.

Friday’s black-tie optional dinner was in a smaller ballroom than the usual one at the Hilton, with fewer people, but largely retained the original program, including a speech by the president and a performance by mentalist Oz Pearlman. The association also honored the Secret Service officer who was shot in April and the hotel staff who were on duty.

“Good evening everyone, let’s try this again,” said Weijia Jiang, the CBS News senior White House correspondent and former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, as the evening began.

The April dinner had just begun when Secret Service intercepted a gunman who ran through a security screening area. U.S. authorities later charged Cole Thomas Allen, 31, of California, with using a firearm in a crime of violence and assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.

Secret Service agents evacuated the president, first lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other Cabinet officials from the packed ballroom as other attendees ducked for cover under tables.

It was the latest example of political violence in America and one of several attempted assassinations of Trump, who survived a 2024 shooting at a Pennsylvania campaign event just months before being re-elected to office.

Jiang decried political violence and praised the media members who in April instantly pivoted from attending the last gala to reporting on it, many of whom were in attendance again on Friday. “We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word.”

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