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Before comedian – and The Daily Show Correspondent — Roy Wood Jr. took the stage to host the 2023 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a whimsical orgy of politicians, media personalities, and dressed-to-the-nines celebs invited by media companies as their guests and selfies partners (this year includes the likes of Julia Fox, Lisa Vanderpump, and the guys from the reality series Farmer Wants Wife) which would be completely ridiculous if it weren’t for the scholarships awarded to aspiring journalists and the presence of guests such as Brittney Griner, the former WNBA star, and his wife Cherelle, actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger started things in a cold open.
After more than an hour of watching the 2,600 attendees packed into the Hilton Ballroom in Washington, DC, mingle and dine, Schwarzenegger flew in from Los Angeles for “a very special message,” praising of freedom of the press as an “ally of the people” before feeding the baby horses to him twins co-star Danny DeVito. Then, White House Correspondents’ Association President Tamara Keith on NPR gave a shout-out to Wall Street Journal Correspondent Evan Gershkovich, now imprisoned in Russia on trumped-up “espionage” charges, and Austin Tice, a freelance journalist who has been imprisoned in Syria for nearly 11 years.
“We are working every day to secure his release,” President Joe Biden said of Gershkovich in his speech, which veered from the sentimental to the comedic. “Journalism is not a crime. Evan and Austin must be released THEN, along with every other American held hostage or wrongfully imprisoned abroad.” (While Biden served as VP, the Obama administration investigated several journalists and repeatedly tried to compel the former New York Times reporter James Risen to reveal his sources.)
Biden cracked some jokes, including that Rupert Murdoch is so old that he makes him “look like Harry Styles,” the Fox News reporters were there because they “couldn’t say no on a free meal” after the $787 million Dominion settlement, and mocked Elon Musk’s tweet that NPR should be “defunded,” saying that “the best way to do NPR The walk is for Elon Musk to buy it.”
Roy Wood Jr., the son of a journalist, finally took the microphone after 10:30 p.m., and his entertaining set focused on the recent firing of the white-nationalist Fox News host. Tucker Carlson, the firing of CNN’s Don Lemon after allegations of misogyny, the GOP’s war on critical race theory, and even Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Tonight, we are all united under one thing, and that is the scandal,” said Wood Jr. “Scandals have engulfed the races this year. The untouchable Tucker Carlson is out of a job… but to Tucker’s staff, I want you to know that I know how you feel. I work at The Daily Show, so I was also blindsided by the sudden departure of the host of a fake-news-program. Tucker was caught. Caught like that dude from Vanderpump Rules [Tom Sandoval].”
“Speaking of assholes, Don Lemon is out of a job,” he said later. “Don Lemon. My dog, Don Lemon. Don Lemon released a statement saying CNN fired him, then CNN released a statement saying they offered Don a meeting. They had to split up, because Don Lemon couldn’t even report an accurate story about Don Lemon.
Wood Jr. took some shots at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the anti-critical policies of the GOP race theory, which he said is “just an attack on Black history, and an attempt to erase the contributions of Black people from the history books.”
“That’s it,” the comic continued. “You’re trying to erase Black people, and a lot of Black people don’t mind some of that erasure – as long as the black man is Clarence Thomas. A billionaire named Harlan Crow flew Clarence Thomas off the hook trips like an Instagram model, took Clarence to the Maldives… paid for Clarence Thomas’ mom’s house! I have to give it to the billionaires. You always have something new to buy. If you think about everything that you can buy on Earth, a billionaire has a new thing. You all bought space rockets. You bought Twitter. This guy bought a Supreme Court Justice… We all see Clarence Thomas, but he belongs to billionaire Harlan Crow. And that’s what an NFT is.”
A few light digs at Joe Biden’s snooze gave way to a funny defense of Vice President Kamala Harris that turned into a dig at former VP Mike Pence.
“I think the most insulting scandal of the Biden administration is laid at the feet of our Madam Vice President. The scandal of: What did Kamala do? he said. “That’s a disrespectful question. That’s a disrespectful question, because nobody asked the vice president until a woman got the job. I don’t know what Mike Pence does. All I know about Mike Pence is that he’s really good at playing hide- undercover in the Capitol. You gotta be sneaky to catch Mike Pence in the Capitol, kid. He knows all the nooks and crannies.”
UPDATE 11:58 PM: This story has been updated to clarify the Obama administration’s treatment of reporter James Risen.
