The White House Correspondents’ Dinner returned to in-person proceedings yesterday for the first time since 2019—and featured a comedian, Trevor Noah, as the headliner for the first time since 2018. (TVNewser)
The 2,600 guests included Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, business executives and some lower-wattage Hollywood figures. Kim Kardashian, escorted hand-in-hand by Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson and a personal photographer, attended, as did Martha Stewart, Drew Barrymore, Brooke Shields and Caitlyn Jenner, among others. There were even a healthy cohort of actual White House correspondents in attendance. (WaPo)
President Joe Biden took a pointed shot at Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He noted no president had attended the event since Barack Obama did in 2016. “We had a horrible plague … followed by two years of COVID,” Biden cracked. (HuffPost)
The last time a comedian held court was Michelle Wolf in 2018. Wolf went after Trump administration officials, including then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, harder than many involved with the event liked, and the following year the WHCA decided to choose a historian, instead of an entertainer, to headline the event. (TVNewser)
“I expect this from Sean Hannity, but the rest of you, what are you doing?” Noah asked. “You spent the last two years telling everyone the importance of wearing masks and avoiding large indoor gatherings. Then the second someone offers you a free dinner, you turn into Joe Rogan.” (The Daily Beast)