WASHINGTON — The rescheduled White House Correspondents Dinner will take place Friday evening in Washington, D.C., months after an assassin tried to barge into the event and target the president and top conservatives. Friday’s White House Correspondents Dinner will take place at the Waldorf Astoria, formerly Trump Hotel, in downtown D.C. — “a Building and Ballroom that I built,” as the president said in a Truth Social post earlier this summer. “I was asked to be there, and speak, by Weijia Jiang, President of The White House Correspondents’ Association, and have accepted,” Trump added. “I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out.” Friday night’s event, including Trump’s speech, will be streamed live on The Daily Wire. The previous dinner was held at the Washington Hilton, where, on April 25, a shooter named Cole Tomas Allen attempted to charge into the event and open fire on multiple top Trump administration officials, according to federal prosecutors. Karoline Leavitt promised from the briefing room podium on Thursday that Trump “looks forward to finishing what he started” before the assassination attempt, encouraging Americans to “tune in, for what promises to be a very entertaining and memorable evening.” “The president’s speech will be a combination of unifying yet vicious, and serious yet hilarious, all at the same time, if you can imagine that,” Leavitt added on Friday. “One thing I can assure you, it will be entertaining.”   Karoline Leavitt, Melania Trump, Donald Trump, and Weijia Jiang attend The White House Correspondents Dinner at Washington Hilton on April 25, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for OP) The Secret Service told The Daily Wire on Friday that it is committed to ensuring the safety and security of the dinner, sharing that “Secret Service personnel have been in collaboration with the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), hotel security, and law enforcement partners at the federal and local level.” Guests should expect to see a “visible police presence around the Waldorf Astoria hotel,” Anthony Guglielmi, U.S. Secret Service chief of communications, shared on Friday, noting that there will be enhanced traffic closures due to the location of the event. All guests of the dinner will have to go through “airport-style magnetometer screening,” and the roads around the Waldorf will be closed on Friday. “We are confident that our robust security plan will ensure the safety of our protectees and attendees, just as our plan did in April,” Guglielmi said. “Our agency grows and adapts from every event we secure, and we have engaged with WHCA to ensure attendees are given timely information in the unlikely event on an emergency during the event.” This image shows Cole Tomas Allen, the suspect in the shooting incident in Washington at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, while in his hotel room at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, on April 25, 2026. (Photo by U.S. Department of Justice/Getty Images) Weijia Jiang, the outgoing president of the White House Correspondents Association, said Friday night’s dinner will not only be an opportunity to actually hold the dinner, but it will also be “a statement that violence has no place in American life and a free press will not be intimidated into silence.” “As you have all demonstrated, courage and community can and should rise above,” Jiang told the White House press in an emailed statement. Authorities indicted accused assassin Allen on four charges: attempting to assassinate the president, assault on an officer of the United States with a deadly weapon, transporting a firearm, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. He is the fourth known person to attempt to assassinate Trump in the past two years. Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Trump during his Butler, Pennsylvania rally in July 2024, Ryan Wesley Routh attempted to shoot Trump on September 15, 2024, and Austin Tucker Martin was shot and killed by authorities as he attempted to breach Mar-a-Lago in February 2026. Crooks was also killed by authorities, and Routh is serving a life sentence in prison.