United States President Donald Trump was scheduled to address a rally in Pennsylvania to mark his 100th day in office on Saturday, even as the occasion turns out to be a replay of the polarised election campaign last year. Among other lingering, divisive debates, the 100th day would also underscore the President’s confrontational style with the media as he would skip the White House Correspondents Association dinner.
Among the several protest events planned across the U.S, in Washington, climate change activists would march from the Capitol to the White House.
The last time a President skipped the correspondents’ dinner was 36 years ago, in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was recovering from a bullet injury.
His stated contempt for the media apart, Mr. Trump has given a series of interviews through the first 100 days, and he meets with White House pool reporters more frequently than his predecessor Barack Obama.
On Friday, Mr. Trump became the first President in 34 years to address a convention of the National Rifle Association (NRA), the lobby of American gun manufacturers and users that spent more than $ 30 million for his campaign last year.
“In the history of the organization and today I am also proud to be the first sitting President to address the NRA leadership forum since our wonderful Ronald Reagan in 1983,” Mr. Trump told the gathering. The President and leaders of NRA promoted the idea of ‘good guys with guns’ saving the country.
“When there is evil at the door, you don't disarm the law abiding citizens of the country.. ..This election was about hope. He is someone who could change the status quo,” said Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of NRA. “There is a tremendous pride wave in the heartlands of the country” after Mr. Trump’s victory, he said.
Mr. Trump has added more than eight million new followers on twitter in the last 100 days. He now has 28.5 million followers. Mr. Trump tweeted five times daily on average, totaling 510 tweets as President.
ProPublica, a nonprofit news outlet and Politwoops, a group that tracks deleted tweets of public figures, found that he deleted 11 of them.
On day one, he tweeted he was “honoured" to be President and deleted it after realising the mistake. He tweeted about media being the enemy of American people, deleted it to add more names. The revised one said:
"The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!."
In another first in the first 100 days, he announced the appointment of Lt. General H.R. McMaster as the new NSA adviser, on twitter.
White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders explained Mr. Trump's decision to skip the dinner in a TV interview. "This wasn't a President that was elected to spend his time with reporters and celebrities."
