Here Are the Big Moments From the Rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner #Political
Friday marked the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD) following the April 25 dinner being postponed following another alleged deranged leftist who sought to assassinate President Trump.
With a third of the original attendance and a different venue, the show went on with all of the awards for anti-Trump screeds, remarks by the President, and outgoing White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) President Weijia Jiang of CBS News, and a mind-bending performance from Oz Perlman.
Given the nearly five-hour runtime from Hail to the Chief to the end of Perlman’s routine, let’s walk through just a few moments and takeaways.
Jiang continued to exude the unity she displayed in April and showed Friday why we would be hard-pressed to find a more level-headed and ego-free WHCA president. As we’ll see, she hit the right points about a reality all too ignored by liberal, elite media: The First Amendment applies to all of us.
Her pre-dinner remarks were laudatory of the President for coming, and praising both Trump and her fellow journalists for how they handled the traumatic first go-around. She argued Trump was right to call the unity following the attack “a very beautiful thing to see.”
“Three months later, it still is. Whatever may divide us, we stand together against political violence. An assassination attempt on our President is an attack on democracy itself. Tonight – tonight, our message is this: We are back. We will not be intimidated. We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word,” she added.
After dinner, she noted Calvin Coolidge was the first President to attend the WHCD in 1924, offered some thank yous, and reiterated her belief that President Trump and the press, in theory, share the same mission, and “duty to serve the American people.”
This went into a moving video about April’s shooting from Jiang’s colleague, CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil:
The next portion was bizarre as an AI James Madison appeared and, in a shot at Trump, reminded those there that while “you’re now worried about tweets, algorithms, and people yelling on television,” no one should be able to change “the rule” that “[t]he government doesn’t get to shut the press up, not when it’s wrong, not when it’s annoying and not when it’s asking uncomfortable questions.”
How stunning and brave.
The AI Madison reappeared later after a package from current and former White House reporters that, while it included a few of our conservative friends in the press corps, it included former and disgraced retired journalists:
Moving to the speeches and awards, new WHCA President Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News praised Jiang, denounced the attempt on the President’s life as “a sobering reminder that democracy is not immune to violence, and the freedoms that we cherish can never be taken for granted,” said “[p]olitical violence must have no home in America,” and delivered an award to the staff of the Washington Hilton.
After Jiang honored law enforcement serving back in April and recognizing WHCA scholarship recipients, it was time for the WHCA’s awards, read out by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. We covered it when they were announced, noting five of the six were for reporting hammering Trump, something we never saw of President Biden until the 2025 show (based on reporting from 2024).
Blitzer handed them out to The Wall Street Journal’s Josh Dawsey (Trump personnel), the Associated Press’s Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller (Trump purging National Security Council staff), CNN’s Kaitlan Collins (Trump vs. Zelenskyy), Getty Images (Trump appearing uninterested in a man who passed out), The Journal again (Trump and Jeffrey Epstein), and The New York Times’s Tyler Pager (slew of negative headlines).
None of those recipients spoke, but one who did – retired AP photojournalist Susan Walsh for the Dunnigan Payne Award for Lifetime Achievement – did, and she closed with a veiled shot at Trump: “[T]o all the journalists out there who are working incredibly hard to report the truth, despite access issues, insults, and subpoenas. Keep it up. Your work matters and we need you now more than ever.”
Jiang’s keynote was the only thing standing between the world and the President’s address, but she took a candid stroll down memory lane to what would probably surprise a lot of people about her upbringing as a first-generation American in rural West Virginia where her parents ran a Chinese restaurant:
She next delivered some stunning, firmly pro-America, and welcome remarks about the First Amendment as something for “all Americans” and that the press is “not special,” so “[w]e cannot demand accountability without practicing it” by taking in outside criticism:
The President would take up just over the next hour, but started on a humorous note, quipping “this has not been an easy evening for him,” although “it’s great to be back at a place that I know very well because I built it” in his former hotel (now the Waldorf Astoria).
Trump delivered the first of what would be multiple jokes about running for an (unconstitutional) third term:
Also early in the speech and just prior to a denouncement of political violence, Trump had a quip about Nicki Minaj as having been there for the ill-fated first dinner:
Skipping ahead, he paid tribute to both Jiang and Heinrich, making particular reference to the latter’s new marriage to Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), a moderate Republican:
Trump alluded to the work of the Media Research Center when talking about Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt:
Starting with a lengthy riff about the incoming White House Ballroom, the rest of the speech dragged with multiple asides and riffs – otherwise known as The Weave – about current events that would normally be deployed at campaign rallies.
One notable and genuine zinger was this one about the evening’s dinner and Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
Trump on RFK: “I hope that everyone finally got to enjoy their entire, very delicious beef tenderloins, very special beef, and I want you all to know that Bobby Kennedy is right here, personally ran over the cow in his car. Boom, and he cut it up, and he brought it here for you… pic.twitter.com/rAjv8B6sGc
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 25, 2026
The next series of jokes was proposing a follow-up to UFC 250 at the White House, which would star “Sloppy Chris Christie” vs. Jerry Nadler, AOC vs. a foreign policy question, and Anderson Cooper vs. Lawrence O’Donnell:
Trump’s joke matchups for the next UFC fight at the White House…
“Sloppy Chris Christie, Chris Christie, one of the sloppiest human beings you’ll ever meet, fighting – I would say, I could mention the governor of Chicago, but I’m going to mention instead Jerry Nadler, and… pic.twitter.com/jpJaTkYb6j
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 25, 2026
Trump had brutal and similar missives to hurl at deranged leftists Jimmy Kimmel, “sick old woman” Rosie O’Donnell, and “pencil neck” Adam Schiff:
Trump on Jimmy Kimmel, Adam Schiff, and Rosie O’Donnell: “But this year the association decided not to have a comedian, so they considered using Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, these guys, they, they’re terrible. They’re terrible. Stephen Colbert, these are people without talent.… pic.twitter.com/rQElk47BCA
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 25, 2026
Without a doubt, Trump’s most controversial moment of the night came shortly thereafter when, after a benign jab at the Oscars hemorrhaging ratings for being woke, he not only revisited his observation that CNN’s Collins doesn’t smile, but argued her doppelgänger is trans actor Dylan Mulvaney:
Collins’s CNN colleague Jake Tapper was also called out:
The speech continued on with rehashes of past callouts to far-left elected Democrats, so it was surprising when this one about Bari Weiss and CBS News made its way in that, if a Democrat President had said it, the room would have been howling in laughter:
His concluding remarks ran for nearly seven minutes, starting with a concession that “for all of the trouble that you give me, you give me a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache, I hope all of you know that I believe in the free press more than anyone in this room does. Ehh, maybe not quite. But that’s why I’m proud to be the most open and transparent President in history.”
There was a reality check for the press whenever he’s gone: “[Y]ou people have no idea how lucky you are. When I’m gone, you’re all going to be broke. Your business model is going to be finished. No, it’s true. When I’m not around, you’re gonna be broke. There’s not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about anybody else.”
Once he trolled the liberal journalists one last time with talk about third and fourth terms, he declared Friday “an interest evening” because “I didn’t really know what to expect, and it’s far worse than I actually thought, but if you want to know that, but I didn’t know exactly what to expect, and I’ve made a lot of friends tonight.”
Here was how he brought it home following one last Weave:
I just want to say it is a room I have tremendous respect for the people in this room. Sometimes I don’t feel you treat me fair, or maybe you do. I don’t know. I don’t feel that, but sometimes you treat me very fairly, and I have a lot of respect for your profession, your profession’s amazing, and I just want to thank you for having me, and it’s been fun, and I’ve met a lot of great people and, you know, I used an expression, I’ve used it right from the beginning. I did this for one reason, to make America great again, and that’s what’s happening right before your very eyes. We have made America great again. It’s going to get a lot greater. So, thank you all very much. It’s an honor to be with you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Poor Perlman had to follow a long, winding set of Trump remarks, but he had some spell-binding moments, including this exchange at the end with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche:
Here was the full show, beginning with guessing dream vacation destinations of random audience members that included Fox’s David Spunt and Reuters’s Steve Holland. Keep your eyes peeled for others to surface, including Fox’s Kevin Corke and State Department official Erin Scavino:
To see a partial transcript of the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, part 2, click here.
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