Trump finally says why he will skip the White House Correspondents' Dinner

Donald Trump finally told the world why he's skipping the traditional White House Correspondents' Dinner this year, and his reasoning is a hoot.

On Saturday, Trump used his Twitter account to announce he would not be attending the traditional dinner. Many people immediately assumed he was doing his best to avoid being demolished by the many jokes that would undoubtedly be made at his expense.

We've seen him targeted at past dinners by professional comedians like Seth Meyers and Barack Obama, so it made sense, but in an interview with Fox and Friends on Tuesday morning, Trump claimed he's not attending because of "fake news."

Oh.

While it seems unlikely that a man of such importance would let fake news deter him from such a time-honored political tradition, Trump insists attending dinner during a time when the media is writing about him would simply not be appropriate.

"I just thought in light of the fact of fake news and all of the other things we’re talking about now, I thought it would be inappropriate that I went," Trump said.

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Perhaps Trump feels that by not attending the event, he eliminates “fake news” outlets like CNN from writing literally anything about him. Nice solution, dude.

"I just thought it would be better if I didn’t do the dinner. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it next year, but I just thought it would be better if I didn’t do it," he concluded.

Speaking about "fake news," when the dicey topic of Trump's views on his friends in the media was brought up in the interview, he had a lot to say.

Trump explained he has no problem with the media hitting him, so long as it's justified. "I believe that a lot of the sources are made up, a lot of the stories are made up," he said, describing the media's coverage of him. "I believe a lot of the stories are pure fiction, they just pull it out of air."

Though Trump claimed in this interview to have "great respect" for the press, reporters and the journalism profession, on President's Day he tweeted that he saw the media as "the enemy of the American people."

All we know for sure: Trump will be the third president to miss the annual event, but the first to blame his absence on fake news.

What a time.