RESOLVING THE LEDGER
This is one outlet's own report from Rolling Stone — the article as it was filed. Other outlets are covering the same event; open the full story to compare every source side by side.
See the full story · 2 sourcesOn the latest episode of The Daily Show , Jon Stewart took aim at Donald Trump 's rambling speech during the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The president spoke for nearly an hour during the annual event, which was rescheduled for Friday night after a gunman fired shots inside the Washington Hilton in April.
Stewart played a clip of Trump attempting to make a joke during the speech, which drew silence from the audience at the WHCD. "Normally I'd say, 'Don't quit your day job,'" Stewart said. "But in this case I will make an exception."
Many of Trump's cronies have praised the president for being funny, but Stewart wasn't convinced. "When I was watching him do that one joke he doesn't seem very funny at all," Stewart noted. "Look, I've been in that situation. We all try new material. Doesn't go well. On to the next one. You cannot judge Trump's hour-long special just on that one joke."
The host played another "joke" and broke down why it did not work, largely because Trump set up the premise and then rambled for four minutes. "You set up the premise and then you just walk out into the street?" Stewart questioned. He went on to break down several more jokes, none of which Trump was able to land.
"You don't do jokes like you're reading them for the first time," Stewart exclaimed in frustration. "He's putting 10 pounds of roast jokes into a five-pound bag. It doesn't work this way! There are rules to these things."
As he played more clips from the WHCD, Stewart offered Trump some advice about delivering jokes, including how to correctly roast someone and how to keep the audience engaged.
"The audience was so distraught and perplexed that at times it was difficult to discern whether you were watching their reactions to Trump bombing at this dinner or their reactions to a gunman interrupting the last one," Stewart recounted. The host then offered a new segment he called "Shooting or Bombing," which involved guessing which clips of the audience were from which event. Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century
During his speech, Trump mocked CNN reporter for receiving an award and claimed he got her confused with Dylan Mulvaney. "I want to personally congratulate CNN 's Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award," Trump said. "It was all about me. It's a fake — she shouldn't get the award, it was a fake. But I didn't mind. I said, 'Kaitlan, congratulations.' But it was fake, there's no question about it."
The president went on to criticize Collins for never smiling. "You should be a happy person," Trump said. "So smile, Kaitlan. Just smile."
Stewart joked that Wolf Blitzer should have gone onstage to slap Trump, like Will Smith at the Oscars. "Look, this a bad night," Stewart concluded. "Beyond the fact that Trump was terrible, the dinner should not have happened at all. In fact, it shouldn't ever happen. Quite frankly, memorializing the collegial and cozy relationship between the press and those that they cover is, at best, a very bad look in normal times. I don't need to see the cops and robbers getting along at a banquet honoring our penal code."
Stewart called the event "an act of submission" because it involved the press participating with Trump. "You'd think you'd all be mad at him," he said. "But they're all in there just schnicking it up. So he just gets to shake hands with the leaders of a profession whose members he has subpoenaed, arrested, sued, cut their funding, threatened their licenses, barred their access, and even had fucking deported."
AIPROPX is an independent multi-source news index — we track, compare, and connect coverage from across the web into one place you won't find anywhere else.