President Donald Trump used a rambling, hour-long speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Friday to attack members of the media and make a series of crude jokes about critics and Democrats. The president openly complained about the “frickin’ stupid speech that they wrote” for him after a bizarre sex joke about stairs failed to land.
Despite claiming to be the “most open and transparent” president in history with “tremendous respect” for journalists, Trump spent much of his address railing against the Washington press corps. He singled out CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, repeating his demand that she smile more when covering him, and branded CNN’s Jake Tapper “Fake Tapper”, while claiming the Wall Street Journal’s Josh Dawsey was “unhireable”.
Trump also mocked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., joking that he personally killed the beef served at dinner and that the administration had rejected a plan to add raccoon meat to the menu. The president additionally used a lengthy section of his speech to promote his controversial $600 million White House ballroom project, complaining that “very unpatriotic” people were suing to block it due to “Trump derangement syndrome”.
The event, which had been postponed from April after a security breach, saw Trump deliver a mixture of self-deprecating humour and attacks on journalists. He warned the audience to prepare for a possible third dinner if something else went wrong, adding that most people declined to wear bulletproof vests “because they’d rather die than look 20 pounds heavier”.
