Trump budget boosts defense by $54 billion, cuts from domestic spending

In addition, several news organizations had also already made a decision to skip, or scale back their involvement in, this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner in protest of Trump’s ever-escalating war on the media. According to a report in BuzzFeed, CNN, a recent target of the president’s ire, is still considering whether to attend.

Smaller outlets that have provided favorable coverage of the Trump administration, such as Breitbart and the One America News Network, received a green light to attend the briefing.

The White House Correspondents Association has announced that they will still hold the event whether Trump attends or not.

Similarly, the night was also the venue for Barack Obama’s famous “birth video”, another sly dig at the false birther rumours spread by the man who now sits in the Oval Office.

“The WHCA takes note of President Donald Trump’s announcement on Twitter that he does not plan to attend the dinner”, Reuter’s reporter Mason wrote fellow White House correspondents. It usually involves the roasting of the president by a comedian emcee, with proceeds given to charity.

Several news organizations had already withdrawn from the April 29 event in protest of Trump’s treatment of the media.

Last month, Bloomberg and Vanity Fair, who typically host a Correspondents’ Dinner after party, pulled the plug on the event.

On Friday, Mr Trump told the American Conservative Union’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland: “Nobody is going to mess with us”.

The annual fundraiser for college scholarships mixes politicians, journalists and celebrities – and Trump himself has been mocked during previous dinners. The initial draft of the budget is said to assume economic growth by 2.4 percent, whereas the President had earlier promised an increase by 3 percent.

Drawn up by Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney, National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, the budget proposal is meant to mitigate accusations of chaos and incoherence within the executive branch.