Correspondents’ dinner: well, that was awkward
Imagine inviting someone who is notorious for being antagonistic and boorish toward your group, and when they speak … they are antagonistic and boorish toward your group.
As British singer-songwriter Maisie Peters would say, “This is on you.”
Donald Trump spoke for about an hour Friday at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, presumably entertaining his staff and his most ardent supporters. For the journalists in the room, it was the Hour of Cringe.
On her MS NOW show that ran while Trump was speaking, Jen Psaki laid out the long-established and honored template for presidential speeches at the correspondents’ dinner: a lot of self-deprecating humor, a few good-spirited pokes at some of the high-profile attendees, then a heartfelt pivot to the importance of the First Amendment and the vital role of journalists in a democracy.
Not the Trump way.
He began with brief, generic praise of the press and the First Amendment before meandering into familiar Trump territory: his planned White House ballroom, the recent U.F.C. fight on the White House lawn.
He then turned to insulting, among others, Sen. Adam Schiff, Rosie O’Donnell, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Rep. Jerry Nadler. He also mocked journalists Kaitlan Collins and Josh Dawsey, two of the evening’s honorees. Collins, of course, does not smile enough, in Trump’s view.
He closed the speech talking about running and winning a “fourth election” while he donned a Trump 2028 hat.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had promised in advance of the dinner that the speech would be “entertaining,” her preferred entertainment apparently being insults unleavened by humor.
The most thankless role of the evening belonged to the outgoing WHCA president, Weijia Jiang, who had to walk the line between civility and cordiality while maintaining credibility among her colleagues — although they could be rightly tagged as her co-conspirators in this painful and predictable (predicted!) evening.