President Donald Trump used a rambling, roughly 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. At one point, he complained about the "frickin' stupid speech" written for him after a sex joke about stairs failed to earn laughs.
The president reserved particular fury for CNN's Kaitlan Collins, repeating his demand that she smile more when covering him. He also branded CNN's Jake Tapper "Fake Tapper" and called Wall Street Journal's Josh Dawsey, an award winner at the dinner, "unhireable." CNN chief executive Mark Thompson responded with a statement defending the network's journalists and their constitutional right to report.
Trump joked about his allies' remaking of CBS News, comparing it to the war against Iran, and referred to Bari Weiss as a "gay dictator" running the network. Weiss, who is lesbian and married to reporter Nellie Bowles, has faced criticism from inside her newsroom.
The president earned some laughs from the audience when he took a self-deprecating tone, noting that he received 93 percent negative publicity. He also told journalists that they would be "broke" once he was gone, and cracked jokes about the security breach that disrupted the original 2026 dinner.
In other remarks, Trump touted his controversial $600 million White House ballroom project, complained about lawsuits blocking it, and joked that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had personally killed the beef served at dinner, adding that a plan to add raccoon meat to the menu was rejected.
