'The show must go on': Trump returns to rescheduled White House press gala

United States President Donald Trump returned to the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, three months after a gunman upended the event. 'As I said three months ago, the show must go on,' Trump said at the start of his speech on Friday, after a lengthy awards ceremony. 'Just like my presidency, the second time is always better and the third time will be better yet,' Trump quipped, before raising his hands at the crowd and saying, 'I'm only kidding.' The US president is limited to two terms by the Constitution, but Trump has been facetiously floating the idea of running for a third time. The rescheduled dinner took place in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, with a guest list of 700 people. 'It was an assault on our democracy itself; it was a very serious situation,' Trump said of the alleged assassination attempt. He lauded some of his aides, including Pete Hegseth, Steve Miller and Tom Holman, for showing 'bravery' during the incident. 'They were standing on tables, when most of you were under the tables,' he said. 'Many people yelled, Get down. Get down, which caused Nicki Minaj to start twerking,' Trump said. Trump later used the event to rebuke political opponents. He called Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom 'newscum', questioned Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's intelligence, and pretended that someone in the audience was calling Illinois Governor JB Pritzker a 'fat pig.' The US president also called top Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer 'Palestinian' as an insult. 'This is the largest gathering of people with Trump derangement syndrome,' he said. WHCA president Weijia Jiang of CBS News thanked Trump for his support. 'Tonight our message is this: We are back,' she said. 'We will not be intimidated. We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word.' Trump's enthused attendance represented a sea change from his first term, when he declined to attend over the next four years.