The White House’s annual dinner with governors closed a week of escalating political friction in Washington, with President Donald Trump moving the gathering through a sequence of last-minute decisions and sharply framed remarks as the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling landed. The Associated Press reported that Moore ultimately attended a Friday working event at the White House, but that when Saturday’s dinner arrived, no Democrats were spotted in the room.
The conflict began ahead of this week’s National Governors Association conference. The Associated Press reported that Trump ridiculed the NGA’s bipartisan leadership and said he would not invite Moore of Maryland, along with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, to a working event at the White House on Friday. Trump later relented at the last minute and allowed Moore to attend, according to the report.
After Democrats threatened to boycott Saturday’s dinner if members of their party were blocked from the Friday meeting, some participants still said they would stay away even after Moore’s attendance, the Associated Press said. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, in a statement, said, “President Trump has made this whole thing a farce,” according to the Associated Press.
When the dinner finally began, the Associated Press reported that the black-tie event went forward without Democrats present. It described the scene as a dinner of tall candles on tables, with top administration officials and Republican governors in attendance. In brief remarks, Trump joked that state leaders “look in that mirror and say, I should be president, not him,” the Associated Press reported.
The timing of the remarks followed a major legal development during the week. The Associated Press reported that the event ended shortly after Trump learned of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down his sweeping tariff policy. In the same Associated Press account, Trump did not criticize any Democrats by name, but he blamed two states led by Democratic governors when he referenced a sewage spill in the Potomac River near Washington.
Trump said, “We have to clean up some mess that Maryland and Virginia have left us,” according to the Associated Press, adding that “it’s unbelievable what they can do with incompetence.” The Associated Press reported that the ruptured pipe was part of a Washington-based utility that is federally regulated and under oversight of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Vice President JD Vance, in remarks at the gathering, praised the governors for having to make tough decisions. The Associated Press reported that Vance said, “nobody blames you when anything goes wrong,” reflecting the administration’s framing of the governors’ responsibilities. Several governors and former NGA leaders who have attended previous dinners described the event as an opportunity to connect with the president and Cabinet officials outside the daily pressures of state governance.
Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican governor of Arkansas who briefly challenged Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, recalled being assigned to a table with then-Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and getting to know her family. Hutchinson said in an interview, “It’s a glowing evening in the White House,” according to the Associated Press, and he noted he once chaired the NGA.
The final day of the conference on Saturday focused on affordability and political civility. During a conversation about immigration, Moore and Stitt said that both parties have failed over decades to address the issue, the Associated Press reported. Stitt said states should be empowered to issue workforce permits and warned that both parties are making false political assumptions, including saying that “people think ‘OK, all the Democrats want open borders,’” and that “all Republicans hate immigrants.”
Stitt also said that “rural Oklahoma Trump voters” had privately approached him, saying they could not operate their businesses without people trying to obtain work authorization, according to the Associated Press. Despite the turmoil surrounding the week’s meeting, the Associated Press reported that Moore said the conference was a success, quoting him saying there were “a lot of things that were put in our way to try to distract us from our mission” and concluding, “To all the people who tried to make that happen, you failed.”