His speech was racist, homophobic, vindictive and woefully unfunny – and the journalists in the crowd didn’t seem to mind.
President Donald Trump speaks at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Washington DC, Friday, July 24, 2026.(Marc Schiefelbein / AP) Fittingly, the shameful second annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD) 2026 was celebrated in a venue that embodies Donald Trump’s corruption and impunity.
The ceremony was originally held in April at the Washington Hilton, but was interrupted by a failed assassination attempt. The second dinner took place Friday at the Waldorf Astoria Washington DC, known from 2015 to 2022 as the Trump International Hotel Washington DC.
During Trump’s first term, the fact that the sitting president owned a hotel in the capital quickly led to recurring conflicts of interest: Many foreign dignitaries and political allies have paid for the hotel’s services, a quick and easy way to curry favor. At least five people who benefited from Trump’s presidential pardon had previously stayed at the hotel while the commander in chief owned it. Now, in his second term, Trump no longer owns the hotel — and, as the weekend’s nauseating spectacle showed, he probably wishes he still did.
The central event of the WHCD was a speech lasting more than an hour by Trump, during which he marveled at what he was able to do when he owned the hotel. ‘I was very proud of this building,’ Trump said the audience comprised primarily of journalists and White House staff. “That building was hot. Remember the lobby floor? 82,000 feet. For those in real estate, 82,000 feet. That’s a major floor, that’s a major floor. That thing was packed every night. It was filled mostly with Republicans, I would say, but it was packed every night. It almost brings back memories.” Trump being Trump, he then digressed about the “magnificent chandeliers” from the hotel, which were “very special” and made from “Czech crystal”.
The throwaway comment that “most Republicans” are occupying the hotel would be damning if the United States were a country that took the constitutional ban on emoluments seriously. By acknowledging that the building was used by political allies to enrich the president, Trump was demonstrating what legal experts call male reasona guilty mind.
Fortunately for Trump, he wasn’t speaking to a jury. He was speaking to a much friendlier audience – the so-called crème de la crème of American political journalists. Based on all available evidence, they didn’t care. What does a little corruption matter, especially compared to the real thing? gargantuan transplant to Trump’s second term?
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Not that the billions Trump has invested in his personal coffers since returning to the White House matter to WHCD attendees either. If that were the case, they wouldn’t have shown up on Friday. And that tells you everything you need to know about what’s wrong with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Certainly, the event has always been sordid and cringe-worthy, even under presidents far less overtly criminal than Trump. It is a case of backslaps where the media supposed to hold the government accountable spend an evening making bad jokes while rejoicing in its proximity to power. Like Al Smith’s New York dinner, WHCD is meant to humanize the political system by showing that seemingly opposing personalities can come together for a laugh. But in reality, these rituals of courtesy are also rituals of elite impunity: the goal is to create a bond within a restricted circle through social bonds that override any broader principled commitment.
Last April, my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann makes the case To get rid of WHCD completely:
The rationale given for all this has always been that it is an opportunity to deepen the (already corrupt) practice of access journalism by allowing journalists and government sources to put aside their structural differences of interest for an evening and enjoy each other’s well-lubricated company. But for this alibi to hold water, someone somewhere would now have to be able to point to a concrete scoop or productive thaw in press-government relations from all this chatter. I’ve lived in Washington for a quarter of a century, and amid all the secrecy, whisper campaigns and speculation that propel Washington, DC journalism, I’ve never heard even the slightest suggestion that the Correspondents’ Dinner served any useful news-gathering purpose.
Lehmann’s criticism of the WHCD was more than justified by Friday night’s fiasco. Polymath literary essayist Guy Davenport once wrote: “Sometimes, reading Goethe, I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny. » Anyone who listened to the heartbreaking attempt at cheerfulness in Trump’s WHCD speech was overcome by that same paralyzing suspicion.
Instead of humor, Trump resorted to racism and homophobia. He openly insulted his political enemies and journalists in the crudest possible way. He even boasted that his plutocratic friends now own the media and are able to punish journalists who criticize him.
Trump repeated rancid racist lies about Ilhan Omar, saying the Minnesota representative “and her brother are planning to move in together. Very in love.” He added: “She should get the hell out of our country. She shouldn’t be here.” Trump complained that his advisers told him he shouldn’t call Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker a “fat pig.”
Trump made a bizarre sex joke, then scolded the audience for not laughing:
The other day a senator I knew received a text, great guy, from his wife. And she said, “When you get home, I want you to come up the stairs immediately and make love to me.” And he said, “I can’t do both.” » You know what… ha ha. You know?
In other words, ha ha, I can’t go up the stairs and have sex. Him, does anyone have this one? I thought it was actually pretty good. That was actually the only thing I thought was good about this whole fucking stupid speech they wrote. It was the only good one. And it happened without really any big laughs.
Asset alleged to congratulate CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins on winning an award, then proceeded to disparage her. “I want to personally congratulate Kaitlan Collins of CNN on receiving her award,” Trump said. “It was all about me. It’s fake, she shouldn’t get the award, it was fake. But I didn’t mind, I said, ‘Kaitlan, congratulations.’ But it was wrong, there is no doubt about it. Trump then confused Collins with trans actress Dylan Mulvaney, which the transphobic president clearly considered an insult.
Of all of Trump’s failed jokes, the two most telling involved allies who are helping to reshape the media to make it more friendly toward the president: David Ellison, who runs CBS, and Bari Weiss, the loyal servant who runs Ellison’s agenda. Trump’s comments about these two were pure exercises in shaming the mainstream media.
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Of Ellison, Trump said:
But tonight’s event is even crazier than last time.
In fact, it’s such a success that I was informed about it by David Ellison at CBS News, who is going to do a fantastic job. He’s the owner. He’s the owner. He bought it, spent a lot of money and he’s going to make, I think, some fantastic changes and maintain some of the good things. But next year, they’ll call it the Trump Correspondents’ Dinner at the White House.
He told me that. And I really like it. We’re going to change the name, okay? Well, it’s going to be very hot, just like our country is hot. By the way, we’re hot. But to be honest, it’s pretty much the only way they can get me back here. You’re going to have to change the name of the dinner.
The joke on Weiss was based on the fact that she was married to a woman. Trump said:
I have to say that we have an incredible amount of achievements that the media never talks about. For example, under my administration, a once feared and powerful regime that relentlessly attacked America was finally toppled. Their former leaders have been removed from office and they are now led by a gay dictator facing internal divisions.
But I, for one, wish Bari Weiss all the best for CBS News.
Although Trump has borrowed his style from comedians such as Don Rickles and Howard Stern, he doesn’t really do comedy. Instead, he engages in insults that mimic the effect of comedy by violating social norms. But the goal is not to laugh: it is humiliation. And in the case of the comments about Ellison and Weiss, the point was to point out that Trump has powerful friends who can fire people at CBS (and perhaps soon at CNN).
None of this is completely new. The types of comments Trump made at WHCD are largely material Trump has already used at his MAGA rallies. But in this case, the audience was not his MAGA fans but the media elite. By showing up at WHCD, they gave Trump a venue to humiliate them. All of this was done in order to preserve access journalism and elite courting rituals. But Trump’s sheer and utter cruelty had a redeeming side: It made it clear to everyone that elite wooing only fueled the decline of democracy.
Damn Lord Jeet Heer is national affairs correspondent for The nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, Time of the Monsters. He also writes the monthly column “Morbid symptoms.” The author of Art lovers: the adventures of Françoise Mouly in comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: reviews, essays and profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American perspective, The guardian, The New RepublicAnd The Boston Globe.