Hasan Minhaj hosted the annual White House Correspondents Dinner as President Trump became the first POTUS to skip the event in over 35 years.
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Minhaj, a comedian and a senior correspondent on “The Daily Show”, took multiple jabs at President Trump and his administration for being absent from the dinner which is traditionally attended by both, the President and the First Lady, by joking, “The leader of our country is not here, and that’s because he lives in Moscow. It’s a very long flight. It would be hard for Vlad to make it. It’s a Saturday”, alluding to Russia’s strong ties to the Trump administration. He went on to refer to President Trump as “the other guy” who he claimed was “in Pennsylvania because he can’t take a joke.”
He added “[Donald Trump] tweets at 3 a.m. sober. Who is tweeting at 3 a.m. sober? Donald Trump, because it’s 10 a.m. in Russia. Those are business hours.”
President Trump, who was hosting a rally in Pennsylvania in celebration of his 100th day in office, remarked dismissively to his crowd, “A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom in our nation’s capital right now. And I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles away from Washington’s swamp, spending my evening with all of you and with a much, much larger crowd and much better people, right?”
Minhaj, on the other hand, continued entertaining the high-profile journalists in the audience after he started off by stating, “I would say it is an honor to be here, but that would be an alternative fact. It is not. No one wanted to do this. So, of course, it lands in the hands of an immigrant.”
His humor reflected the harsh political reality of the “era of Trump“, as he coined it; he advised the media “You guys have to be more perfect now more than ever. Because you are how the president gets his news. Not from advisers, not from experts, not from intelligence agencies. You guys. So that’s why you gotta be on your A-game. You gotta be twice as good. You can’t make any mistakes. Because when one of you messes up, he blames your entire group. And now you know what it feels like to be a minority.”
Minhaj also targeted multiple news organizations from Fox News to CNN. He commented on his knowledge of Fox News, “As a Muslim, I like to watch Fox News for the same reason I like to play Call of Duty. Sometimes, I like to turn my brain off and watch strangers insult my family and heritage.”
Near the end of his speech, he took a moment to highlight the main message behind the dinner, “This event is about celebrating the First Amendment and free speech.”
He went on to add “Even the president is not beyond the reach of the First Amendment. But the president didn’t show up because Donald Trump doesn’t care about free speech.”
“The man who tweets everything that enters his head refuses to acknowledge the amendment that allows him to do it,” Minhaj criticized. “It’s 11 p.m. In four hours, Donald Trump will be tweeting about how badly Nicki Minaj did at this dinner. And he’ll be doing it completely sober. And that’s his right. And I’m proud that all of us are here to defend that right, even if the man in the White House never would.”
He finished off by thanking the White House Correspondents Association along with prominent journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein “for inspiring a generation of journalists” and lastly he credited
The audience responded by giving him a standing ovation.
