The Sizzle…
On the evening of Saturday, April 25, 2026 gunshots rang out in the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. Gunshots are a weird occurrence in any hotel, but they are especially weird in a fancy hotel that is packed with D.C. luminaries, titans of journalism, and the president of the United States of America. It was the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner. What do I mean by “especially weird”? Well…
HOW WOULD SOMEONE POSSIBLY GET A GUN INTO A HOTEL WHERE THE PRESIDENT IS? HOW COULD THAT SAME SOMEONE TAKE A GUN OUT OF THEIR (extremely suspicious looking) TRENCH COAT AND GET SHOTS OFF WITHOUT GETTING TACKLED BY EVERY SECRET SERVICE AGENT AND BOY SCOUT TROOP IN A TWO MILE RADIUS? ALSO, IT WAS A FREAKING SHOTGUN? HOW DOES SOMEONE WALK AROUND A HOTEL WITH A SHOTGUN IN THEIR PANTS? PEOPLE THINK I’M UP TO NO GOOD WHEN I’M PUTTING TRASH BAGS INTO TRASH CANS IN FRONT OF MY OWN HOUSE!
Luckily nobody was hurt, but the White House Correspondent’s Dinner should have definitely been taken off life support after that evening. But, nope! It was just rescheduled. It happened this past Friday night. It was at a different hotel, because of course it was. (I hope the organizers got their deposit back.) I find it funny that I learned that the dinner had been rescheduled after the dinner happened. That’s only because social media and media in general was abuzz about Trump’s awful (no surprise), hate-filled (no surprise), bullying (no surprise) hour-long speech. He joked (or maybe announced) that he is running for president a forth time (no surprise). There were also plenty of jokes about how Trump had fallen asleep during the evening (no surprise, part five).
My only question is WHY ARE WE STILL DOING THIS?
The Steak…
If you are a member of Generation X or older, you certainly remember a time before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a THING. Of course, technically, it has been a thing for a while. The WHCA dinner began in 1921, and like all “great American institutions,” it didn’t admit non-white men until the ‘50s or women until the early ‘60s. President John F. Kennedy threatened to skip the dinner if ladies weren’t allowed to attend. Make of that what you will.
The dinner didn’t turn into a THING thing until after Twitter became TWITTER. In Twitter’s heyday (a time which coincided with the two Obama presidencies), the site gave birth to a new era of journalism. Twitter turned breaking news into pop culture. Twitter also turned journalists into celebrities. (We can talk about how that has all worked out at another time.) Because of this, the WHCA dinner went from being a more traditionally staid affair with a niche (a.k.a. CSPAN-ian) audience to an event of great public interest. While it did always have celebrities in attendance and onstage, it was really an inside-the-beltway affair where journalists received awards and money was raised for journalism programs. After Twitter got ahold of it, the dinner became known as #NerdProm, a hashtag that trended whenever the evening occurred.
Before that era, the only time I remember the WHCA dinner making national news was when Stephen Colbert used his performance to call out President George W. Bush to his face in 2006. This was when Colbert was still hosting The Colbert Report, where he portrayed the character of a “right wing pundit.” Before Colbert’s performance that year, the comedians who were hired for the dinner only lightly roasted the invited guests. This included a very light roasting of the president, who was usually there. (Once again we are forced to talk about roasts on this page.) Colbert, however, used his satirical character as a way to spit roast Bush until he was well done.
During the Obama era, the main question of the evening was how any comedian could follow Barack Obama. He was often as funny or even funnier than the professional comedians. Obama’s celebrity, natural wit, and charisma, along with the rise of social media, transformed the event into something closer to the Oscars than the Fourth Estate’s well-earned rest before returning to its day job holding power to account. Obama’s most celebrated WHCA dinner moment came in 2011 when he roasted Trump to Trump’s face. It was clear Trump hated every minute of it. Many people point to it as the exclamation point in Trump’s villain origin story. I would say the best argument against comedy roasts is everything that has transpired in this country since that fateful evening.
Like many people, I first really began paying attention to the dinners during the Obama era. I quickly decided that the whole event was weird. I totally understand the press wanting a night like this. It is an opportunity for them to honor their best and to raise money for the next generation of journalists. But I don’t understand inviting the sitting president to attend. I guess I would understand it more if inviting the president was optional. Like if the WHCA felt that a particular sitting president was somehow an extra-special advocate for the freedom of the press and the first amendment. Sure, invite that (mythical) president! But that isn’t how the WHCA dinner works. Ever since the second dinner, the WHCA has issued a standing invitation to the president. To me, that’s why it feels less like holding power to account and more like playing footsies with power. Even when I like the person in power, I don’t like it.
The legendarily thin-skinned Trump skipped all of the dinners during his first term. (COVID-19 did him a solid and canceled the 2020 one for him.) Trump sent his lackeys to the dinners his first presidential go ‘round. In 2018, comedian Michelle Wolf was the headliner. Wolf took the Stephen Colbert approach and made it clear exactly where she stood with Trump, MAGA, and the assembled mainstream media. (She was not a fan.) Consequently, Wolf’s performance didn’t do that well in the room. It killed with all of us who were watching at home. Early on in her monologue Wolf acknowledged that the room was not on her side, but she also made it clear that it was their fault. She remarked, “Yeah, [you] shoulda done more research before you got me to do this.”
Before her performance had ended, the backlash began lashing, even from the so-called left-leaning media. At that point in Trump’s first term, many in the mainstream news media still believed that if we were just nice enough to Trump, he would “grow into the job of leading the country” and then he would naturally be nice to all of us. (BARF!) The news media criticized Wolf to show Trump and MAGA that they would play ball. But the problem was, they had to lie about Wolf’s performance to accomplish this goal.
At one point in Wolf’s routine, she did a run of jokes making fun of Trump’s then press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The coup de gras was this:
“I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful. Like, she burns facts, and then she uses the ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like, maybe she’s born with it; maybe it’s lies.” — comedian Michelle Wolf, only a few feet from Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Many journalists (including the WHCA association itself) decided that this joke was a cheap shot at Sanders’ looks when it was clearly a fair shot at Sanders’ lies. Remember. These were lies that were dividing the country and dismantling democracy. But the WHCA was in their can’t we all just get along bag and released an apologetic a groveling statement. It was a truly sad day for the first amendment.
“Last night’s program was meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporters and scholarship winners, not to divide people. Unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit of that mission.” — The White House Correspondents’ Association giving up.
That’s when I was officially out on the whole enterprise. The next year, in an act of absolute cowardice, the WHCA booked the guy who wrote the book on Alexander Hamilton. The WHCA didn’t book Lin Manuel Miranda, the guy who wrote the book for the musical Hamilton, they booked Ron Chernow, the guy who wrote the biography that inspired Miranda’s musical. It sounds like a premise from the HBO show Veep. Except on Veep, booking Chernow would have been a mistake made by Jonah Ryan. In real life it was framed as a good idea and a way to stand-up for democracy. (Blerg!) Remember, TRUMP WASN’T EVEN THERE!
The lowest moment for the WHCA dinner was in 2025, when they announced that they were going back to booking a comedian to headline. They had secured the services of the hilarious and delightful Amber Ruffin. Ruffin is best known for being a writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers. As soon as word got out, MAGA whined about Ruffin having the gig. (At this point it is important to note that Ruffin is a queer Black woman.) So what did the WHCA do? They buckled and canceled Ruffin.
Ruffin is not divisive. She is delightful in every way. She is as divisive as a designated driver who lets you be in charge of the radio.
(At this point it is important to note that Daniels is a gay Black man.)
If your job is to give out awards to people who speak truth to power and you allow power to tell you who you can be friends with then maybe you shouldn’t be passing out awards to people who speak truth to power.
That brings us to this year. It seems like the WHCA has turned the reins of the dinner fully over to Trump. The whole thing seemed designed to make Trump the center of the evening, but not in a Colbert/Wolf way. The entertainer they booked is not a comedian or even a celebrated historian. He is a corporate-feeling magician who claims that he is not a magician. He claims he has real special abilities that are bigger than magic. He also claims he can teach you these abilities if you buy his book.
Yup, the WHCA booked a Trumpian grifter.
Oz the Mentalist is, in fact, such a grifter that even Pulitzer Prize winner Pablo Torre took time off from taking down an NBA billionaire to find out about this grifter.
During the evening, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins won an award for reporting she did on Trump and JD Vance’s Oval Office tantrums in front of Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But along with her award, Collins also received Trump’s remarks from the stage about her looks. Trump opined, “She’s a young, attractive woman. She never smiles. I said, ‘Kaitlan, do you ever smile? Smile.’” Trump also went to a go-to “insult” from MAGA and the right wing as a whole.
Dylan Mulvaney is a trans woman. The “punchline” here is transphobia. This “joke” is so bad it sounds like Tony Hinchcliffe wrote it.
I’m not saying that no one stood up to Trump during dinner. Wolf Blitzer called Trump out as he presented an award to journalists from The Wall Street Journal for their reporting on the Epstein files. Blitzer used the privilege of having a fully vested retirement fund to speak truth to Trump.
“This year’s award goes to The Wall Street Journal. The Journal’s courageous reporting on President Trump’s past relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein triggered the release of the so-called Epstein files, thousands of documents that might otherwise have remained hidden from the public. And despite the president’s threat of a lawsuit, the Journal published a story about a provocative letter to Epstein bearing President Trump’s signature. Trump quickly filed a $20 billion lawsuit against the journal, revealing reporter Kadija Softar’s home address. Her family had to be relocated. The Journal was kicked off of Air Force One, but the reporters continue to file revelatory stories.” — CNN’s Wolf Blitzer
Trump’s reaction? shoulder shrug and a smirk. You could practically hear Steve Urkel say, “Did I do that?”
Alongside Wolf Blitzer’s statement, we also have this footage from the evening of two journalists—NBC’s Meet The Press host Kristen Welker and Politico’s Dasha Burns—chatting it up with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Look at them laughing it up with Miller, as if Miller doesn’t fall asleep every night by blissfully counting innocent people who were murdered by I.C.E. This clip is argument alone to end the dinners or to at least stop airing them on TV. This isn’t very Forth Estate-ish. At this point, I’d love to get a 1/4 Estate.
My question for the mainstream news media is what are you doing here? I understand the need to try to maintain relationships to get information, but getting dressed up in your fanciest duds and small-talking with fascists is a bridge I wouldn’t cross for anything. What can you possibly get out of chit-chattering with Stephen Miller that is more indicting that what he says proudly into microphones?
In the last three weeks alone, our government has killed multiple innocent people. As I was writing this, I learned that the White House is targeting my friend Kahlil Greene, a Black queer man, for his work that connects I.C.E. to slave catchers. The White House is blaming The Blacksonian for radicalizing him. Meanwhile, Kahlil is an Ivy League graduate and historian. (BOOK KHALIL NEXT YEAR, WHCA!) TikTok and Meta have, as of this writing, deleted Kahlil’s profiles. This is clearly a coordinated effort, and Kahlil is far from the first person to have this happen to them. If you are loud and against the anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-immigrant, anti-everything-good-in-the-universe agenda of Trump and MAGA, then our current government is coming for you. And I don’t think just because you occasionally invite them over for dinner that they will save you.
Go support Kahlil Greene and his important work. This is fascism in action. We only defeat it if we stand together.
September 25 & 26 - Stamford, CT, New York Comedy Club
October 1 - Stanford, CA - Stanford Memorial Auditorium
November 13 - Bellingham, WA, Mount Baker Theatre
People are really enjoying this clip from the latest episode of WHO’S WITH ME? (the podcast) in particular. She talks about why the abuse she received over being in the all-woman reboot of Ghostbusters was utter nonsense. By the end of the clip Leslie is preaching! On Wednesday, my guest is comedian Maria Bamford.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for reading W. Kamau Bell asks, "Who's With Me?"! This post is public so feel free to share it.
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