President Donald Trump used a rambling, roughly hour-long speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Friday to savage members of the media and make a series of crude, often poorly received jokes about critics and Democrats.
At one point, the president openly complained about the “frickin’ stupid speech that they wrote” for him to offer the crowd after a bizarre sex joke about stairs didn’t earn many laughs.
Despite ending his routine by claiming he was the “most open and transparent” president in history who had “tremendous respect” for journalists, Trump mostly railed against the Washington, D.C. press corps, who had assembled for the dinner after the original 2026 event was disrupted by a gunman in April.
The president kicked things off by jokingly complaining about a group of Wall Street Journal reporters who won awards at the dinner for their coverage of the Trump-Epstein saga, reporting that inspired Trump to launch an unsuccessful $10 billion defamation suit last year.
“All these awards,” Trump said. “Do I have a say?”
The president reserved the worst of his fury, however, for CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, repeating his frequent demand that she smile more when she covers him.
The comments were the latest in the president’s long history of singling out female journalists, whom he has previously compared to pigs and called stupid in remarks that critics accuse of being highly sexist.
“We stand by our journalists and the integrity and fair-mindedness with which the CNN team reports the news,” CNN CEO Mark Thompson said in a statement late Friday. “Honest, accurate journalism may sometimes irritate politicians, but our right to report and present that reporting to the public without government interference is fully protected by the U.S. Constitution.”
Trump attacked other journalists over the course of the speech, too, branding CNN’s Jake Tapper “Fake Tapper,” while claiming the Journal’s Josh Dawsey, one of the night’s award winners, was “unhireable.”
The Republican also made a joke comparing his conservative allies’ controversial remaking of CBS News to the U.S. war against Iran.
“Under my administration, a once feared and powerful regime that relentlessly attacked America has finally been toppled,” Trump said. “Their former leaders have been removed, and they're now being run by a gay dictator facing internal divisions, but I, for one, wish Bari Weiss all the best at CBS News.”
Weiss, as The Independent previously reported, has faced repeated criticism and departures from inside her newsroom. She identifies as lesbian and is married to reporter Nellie Bowles.
The president earned a few laughs from the media audience in the Waldorf Astoria hotel when he took a more self-deprecating tone or mocked the precarious state of the media business, a perennial subject of conversation in journalistic circles.
“I’m probably being a little bit oversensitive,” Trump said at one point. “Sometimes I really do think that some of you don't like me. In fact, I read a report. I get 93 percent negative publicity.”
“When I’m gone, you’re all going to be broke,” Trump later said, claiming that “nobody gives a damn about anybody else.”
The president also threw in a few cracks about the security breach in April that scuttled the original dinner.
Trump claimed that the audience on Friday should gear up, just in case, for a potential third fundraising dinner if something else went awry. He added that most people declined to wear bulletproof vests to attend the event “because they’d rather die than look 20 pounds heavier.”
Aside from the attacks on the media, the president used a lengthy section of his speech to tout his controversial $600 million White House ballroom project, complaining that “very unpatriotic” and “not good” people were suing to block it because of “Trump derangement syndrome” as the audience mostly looked on in silence.
After his lengthy digression about the ballroom, Trump had some jabs for a prominent member of his Cabinet, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Trump joked that Kennedy, who has a strange history with roadkill and dead animals, personally killed the beef everyone in the room was eating for dinner, with Trump claiming that he rejected a plan to add some fresh raccoon meat to the menu.
“We drew the line at that,” Trump said, adding that Kennedy was “fun” but a “piece of work.”
Trump’s predecessor wasn’t safe from the ribbing, either.
After talking about his controversial UFC fight on the White House lawn in June, Trump mocked the concerns over President Joe Biden’s mental fitness that dogged the end of his term and brought down his 2024 reelection campaign.
“If you wanted to see someone lose consciousness on the South Lawn of the White House, all you had to do is ask Joe Biden a question,” Trump said.
Trump concluded his routine by donning a Trump 2028 hat and saying he wanted to run for another term, which would be barred by the Constitution. The president has made references to a 2028 campaign in the past, though he claims he’s only kidding.
Reporters speaking before the president offered a mix of jokes and sincerity.
Weijia Jiang of CBS News, who recently finished her term as president of the Correspondents’ Association, joked that the evening’s entertainment, mentalist Oz Pearlman, didn’t need to guess to president’s phone number.
“Half the reporters in this room already have it,” she said, a reference to Trump’s penchant for taking unexpected calls at all hours from a variety of reporters.
The new WHCA president, Jacqueline Heinrich of Fox News, thanked Trump for taking part in a celebration of First Amendment freedoms, and she spoke of the importance of journalism in broadening understanding at a time of rising political violence.
“The freedoms we cherish must never be taken for granted,” she said.
Despite the night’s theme of honoring the independent press, the White House has consistently clashed with the media.
Earlier this week, the government withdrew a controversial attempt to compel three journalists at The New York Times to testify about their sources after they reported on concerns surrounding the president’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One replacement jet.
Last week, the president called for NBC and ABC to lose their broadcast licenses for not airing his recent, highly speculative primetime address about what he claimed was foreign “election interference.”
Both before and after his election, Trump has repeatedly sued news outlets over coverage he disagrees with.
The Department of Defense, meanwhile, has consistently worked to deny journalists the access to defense officials and facilities they enjoyed under previous administrations.
During the dinner on Friday, CBS News’s Jiang gave a special shoutout to the Pentagon reporters in the room.
“Your work is invaluable, especially as our nation is at war,” she said.
Another speaker praised reporters for carrying on “despite access issues, insults, and subpoenas.”
Online, critics of the president took issue with the speech.
“This dinner is a disgrace,” former CNN anchor Jim Acosta wrote on X. “Trump’s rambling, unhinged speech is full of hate and spite. Just spewing nastiness at his usual targets. Let’s not sanitize how truly ugly it was.”
