Prez rally glad to snub DC journos

The White House Correspondents Association held its annual comedic gala without President Trump for the second consecutive year Saturday — with Trump insisting he much preferred speaking to supporters at a Michigan rally.

“I was invited to another event tonight, but I’d much rather be in Washington, Mich., than Washington, DC,” he told a huge crowd there.

Last year, Trump also skipped the dinner in favor of rallying in front of fans, becoming the first president not to attend the affair since 1981, when Ronald Reagan missed the festivities because he was still recovering from a gunshot wound he suffered in the failed attempt on his life.

“Is this more fun?” Trump asked fans who packed Total Sports Park Arena. “I could be up there [in DC] tonight, smiling like I love where they’re hitting you,” he said. “Shot after shot. These people, they hate your guts!” he railed. “And you’ve got to smile.”

Trump indeed missed out on many a shot.

“It’s 2018 and I’m a woman, so you cannot shut me up,” the correspondents’ dinner’s emcee, comedian Michelle Wolf, cracked in her after-dinner speech. “Unless you have Michael Cohen wire me $130,000.”

Also at the rally, Trump tried to deflect revelations in the New York Times that a Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. to give him “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, Natalia Veselniskaya, had closer ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin than she’s let on. Putin convinced Veselniskaya to pretend she was close to the Russian government, Trump claimed, to make things “even more chaotic.”