Friday night’s redo of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner had three things in common with April’s doomed event, which was cut short after the intrusion of a gunman identified by authorities as Cole Tomas Allen. The first was a beaming President Donald Trump, delighted to be holding court among the journalists whom he habitually abuses, insults and subpoenas. The second was the presence of the aforementioned journalists, who in their gowns and tuxedos looked like runway models in a Stockholm syndrome-themed fashion show. And the third was the absence of a comedian entrusted with making jokes about the leader of the free world. 

Roasting the commander in chief was once a venerable WHCA tradition. But like so many American institutions subjected to a MAGA stare-down or shakedown, the organization abandoned its principles.

 In 2025, the WHCA disinvited comedian Amber Ruffin, presumably because her barbs might have scratched the president’s thin skin. This year, the WHCA didn’t invite a comedian at all. With professional comics absent from the dais, roast master Donald was poised to fill the void.

In the lead-up to the April event, Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, mentioned that he was working with joke writers to hone his act (though she insinuated that he didn’t really need their help because he’s so darn funny on his own). Hours before the spring gathering, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt gleefully brayed that “there will be some shots fired tonight.” Then actual shots were fired. Afterward, the president sighed, “I was all set to really rip it.” “I said to my people,” he continued to the tittering approval of the assembled press corps, “this would be the most inappropriate speech ever made.” 

I guess I could say “promises made, promises kept!” But that doesn’t really do justice to the 63-minute set, or speech, or work of performance art that a silent, stunned audience of 700 endured Friday night. The jokes, such as they were, leapt out of endless digressions and fragments of old stump speeches. Even when the president “let it rip” he tended to botch the punchlines or forget to set up the jokes altogether. I guess we should have known that the night would be long when he mentioned that at the previous event Nicki Minaj “started twerking” when the Secret Service screamed “get down.” Actually, that was the best joke of the night. 

Trump promised us his third presidency would be better (to which I say, like Henny Youngman, “Take his presidency, please!”). He called out “nasty women” like CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich. His boundless hatred of the people he was trying to mock (Chris Christie, JB Pritzker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chuck Schumer, James Talarico, Gavin Newsom, Joe Biden, etc.) kept singeing his punchlines. Sometimes he’d forget to set up the joke and stampede right to the burn.

He talked about Adam Schiff’s “watermelon head.” He seemed to get lost framing a joke about Collins which was so puerile I won’t even repeat it here. He alluded to “Fake Tapper” instead of Jake Tapper and spoke of Bruce Springsteen’s “Bored in the USA Tour.” That and a metric ton of falsehoods were brought to you by the White House Correspondents’ Association.

The president of the United States of America, ladies and gentlemen! 

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After the April shooting, some media figures urged the WHCA not to reschedule the gathering. Some argued that all the money for scholarships the gala raises (and which the WHCA mentions over and over again) had already been cashiered. 

Then there were those who referred to the whole people-getting-shot-at thing; did this event really merit the risk? 

Persuasive as it sounds, this argument undermines a classic assumption about free speech that has prevailed in liberal democracies since at least the 19th century. Namely, that violence, or the even threat of violence, cannot be invoked as a reason to abrogate our right to expressive liberty. Healthy democracies do not succumb to what is known as “the heckler’s veto.” For example, if a group on the right or left threatens to drown out a university lecturer because it disagrees with their views, then a society that values free speech would stage the event anyhow. In this sense, last night’s make-up dinner was justified.

Then again, the 19th century is over. We live in different times, with different media technologies — and different access to weapons. The capacities of those who wish to censor speech has grown larger and more lethal. In recent years the “heckler’s veto” has been rechristened the “assassin’s veto” by some scholars. Governments who are serious about the threat to free speech must adapt to these new realities. And so must journalists confronted with governments, like our own, that are wreaking havoc on the First Amendment .

Which brings us to the most convincing rationale for not staging a get-together such as the one that took place Friday night in Washington. The leader of this country has shown zero interest in protecting speech with which he disagrees. He has, in fact, actively taken measures to shut down forms of expression critical of him. Trump is the head of our government. Trump is the one who issues the veto. Trump is the heckler.  How does this arrangement foster free speech? 

Under such circumstances, what should the WHCA have done?

Well, it should have never uninvited the comedians. Scholarships aside, the dinner previously had one socially redeeming value: It forced the most powerful person in America, if not the world, to endure some mockery. Now everything is reversed. The most powerful person in America will (continue to) mock those who disagree with him.

This renders a huge disservice not only to the notion of comedic license, but to how free speech functions in liberal democracies. The WHCA has effectively taken a platform away from critics of the president. And into the void stepped Donald J. Trump, talking about “Gavin Newscum” and exiting the stage wearing a Trump 2028 hat.

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