To Close (To Trump) for Comfort? The Gridiron Club Says an Amateur Singer Makes Too Much News to Star in Its Show
By Paul Farhi
November 3, 2019
WashingtonPost.com
In Washington, even an amateur singer can be a source of controversy these days.
Exhibit A: The Gridiron Club, the hoary Washington institution that has been home to presidents and news media bigwigs for more than a century, just asked one of the performers in its annual satirical show to step aside because of his close ties to President Trump.
Joseph diGenova, a prominent Republican lawyer who has advised Trump and is one of his frequent defenders on Fox News Channel, was booted from performing at the club’s next dinner. Club members cited his prominence as a newsmaker, not his politics.
The Gridiron’s president, Jerry Seib, said he asked diGenova not to sing at the Gridiron dinner in March at the behest of the club’s board, which is made up of journalists. The journalists were concerned about the ethics of collaborating on a show with a potential news subject, said Seib, the Wall Street Journal’s Washington editor.
“He [diGenova] seemed to be edging into a story we all cover,” Seib said, referring to diGenova’s involvement in advising Trump about impeachment. As a result, Seib said he asked diGenova to “step back” from performing in any more skits “until [the impeachment] storm has passed.”
In an interview, diGenova expressed disappointment about his ouster but had only one on-the-record comment about it: “I’m very sad and I feel very sorry for the club.”
The sidelining of diGenova — which Seib stressed is temporary — is unusual for a club that traces its roots to the 1880s and strives to be both bipartisan and lighthearted. (Its motto: “Singe but never burn.”) Its members, who run some of the biggest news bureaus in Washington, have traditionally parodied members of both parties, including the president. Its annual white-tie-and-tails dinner also typically features both Republican and Democratic speakers who make humorous remarks.
Trump has publicly trashed the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner but attended the Gridiron event last year. One possible reason he accepted the club’s invitation: The Gridiron’s festivities are semiofficially off the record and TV cameras are banned, which means only people in attendance see the president being the butt of jokes.
Trump’s attendance, however, raises a question: If diGenova’s status as a newsmaker disqualifies him from performing at the club, why does the Gridiron continue to invite Trump, one of the world’s biggest newsmakers?
Seib drew a distinction between performer and guest, saying, “It has absolutely nothing to do with liking or not liking President Trump at all. We make no such judgments. … We invite the president every year, regardless of party.”
DiGenova has performed at the dinner for more than 25 years, even as he became a fixture in Washington. During that time, he was involved in a number of issues that rated news coverage, such as serving as a legal counsel to a House investigation of the Teamsters union in the mid-1990s.
More recently he has become a prominent ally of Trump, who briefly hired him and his wife and law partner, Victoria Toensing, to defend him during the Mueller investigation. Although that appointment was quickly rescinded, diGenova has remained a staunch defender of the president in his many Fox appearances.
He and Toensing are currently defending the Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash from extradition to the U.S. on corruption charges. One of the interpreters hired by diGenova and Toensing in that case, Lev Parnas, helped Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani investigate former vice president Joe Biden’s son Hunter and his involvement with a Ukrainian energy firm. Parnas and another Giuliani associate were arrested last month and accused by federal prosecutors of illegally funneling foreign money to American politicians to influence U.S.-Ukrainian relations.
While journalists usually write the Gridiron’s humorous songs and perform the dinner skits, diGenova is one of the club’s “ringers,” a special member recruited for his singing ability. DiGenova was trained to sing by his father, a professional opera singer.
The club has taken its share of criticism over the years for projecting a cozy relationship between prominent journalists and the people they cover. The critiques have become more pointed in the Trump era, given his repeated public attacks on the press.
Seib said the request for diGenova to stand down was “fairly standard” for the club, and such requests have been invoked before when performers became prominent news sources. He cited one precedent: The club nixed the participation of attorney David Werner, another ringer, when Werner’s law firm was advocating for enactment of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.